SAVE THE ROCK!!!

Z's always looking for a good purchase/investment. Well how about this.

Our Government Is Coming Back To Us

one step at a time. Bush and his loyalists who have done nothing but fill the pockets of their cronies for the past 6 years (eg: no-bid contracts in Iraq, contractors after Katrina). They passed laws which give them almost unlimited power (eg. the cancellation of our Bill of Rights - the Patriot Act). Finally, some Federal Judges are pulling his or her head our of his or her's ass and finally ruling that the Patriot Act is almost completely Unconstitutional. The President, whose oath is to 'support and defend the CONSTITUTION of The United States' pushed a law that goes against the basics of the piece of paper that Bush wipes his ass with. A few more challenges to that law, and it will disappear and our values will begin to be restored. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. The Conservative PLAN of a perpetual Republican Majority and Presidency has been foiled by the most corrupt people of all - the Republican Majority and President.

I may not agree totally with this article (though it is intriguing). I don't think the Admin wants a fascist regime, but it looks pretty damn similar.

The Time For Talking Is Over

Time To Play!!!!

WARNING: Do Not Buy Halo3...

...until you see this!

I know I know...

I know I said I wouldn't get Halo 3 until later if at all, but I did throw in the caveat that I would probably get it sooner than I thought at that time. Well, I had to stop at Staples to pick up a color laser printer for the office, which is right by my local GameStop. I couldn't help myself... like a moth to a flame, I stopped in and walked out with a copy of Halo 3. I feel like a dirty dirty dirty girl, but absolutely cannot wait to go home and play. I don't care if a 10 year old is going to pwn me.

I am really curious if they ordered a bunch extra in addition to the pre-orders, or if they sold me a copy that really should have gone to some other uber dork. I couldn't find Guitar Hero 2 for weeks, but to find and buy Halo 3 at the first place I looked ON RELEASE DAY? Jesus Tatas! My suggestion to anyone who has the slightest bit of patience is to keep checking the Target ads. Target had Gears for $40 about two weeks after release. Also GameStop will give you a 20% bonus on trades towards Halo 3. Time to finish the fight, if I can finish the work day.

The History of Halo

Read this. Before reading this, I was one of those people who was going to eventually pick up Halo 3. Now I'm ready to go camp out and wait for the midnight madness sales. I never finished the Halo or Halo 2 campaigns. I got pretty damn far into Halo 2, but never knew how it ended because I got swept up in the multiplayer madness. FOUR MORE DAYS LEFT!

Here's one for all you Jr.(the punk) fans

Saw this on Nascar.com. Anyone going to bid?

Commentary: Bush fulfills H.L. Mencken's prophecy
By Joseph L. Galloway | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Wednesday, September 19, 2007

It took just eight decades but H.L. Mencken's astute prediction on the future course of American presidential politics and the electorate's taste in candidates came true:

On July 26, 1920, the acerbic and cranky scribe wrote in The Baltimore Sun: " . . . all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily (and) adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

My late good buddy Leon Daniel, a wire service legend for 40 years at United Press International, dredged up that Mencken quote several years ago and found that it was a perfect fit for George W. Bush, The Decider. MSNBC's Keith Olberman highlighted the same quote this week. A tip of the hat to both of them, and to Mencken.

The White House is now so adorned by Mencken's downright moron, and has been for more than six excruciatingly painful years. It wouldn't be so bad if the occupant had at least enough common sense to surround himself with smart, competent and honest advisers and listen to them. But he hasn't.

We inflicted George W. Bush on ourselves — with a little help from Republican spin-meisters, slippery lawyers, hanging chads and some judicial jiggery pokery — and he has stubbornly marched to the beat of his own broken drum year after year, piling up an unparalleled record of failures and disasters without equal in the nation's long history.

He inherited a balanced budget and a manageable national debt, and in just over six years has virtually bankrupted the United States of America and put us in hock to the tune of nine trillion dollars — a sum larger than that accumulated by all the 42 other presidents we had in two and a quarter centuries.

The man from Crawford, Texas, stood Robin Hood on his head almost from Day One, robbing the poor and the middle class so he could give to the rich and Republican. When the bills for those selective tax cuts, and his war of choice in Iraq, began coming due our president simply signed IOU's for a trillion dollars, with those markers now held by our traditional ally communist China.

Although he titillated the Republican conservative base with talk of his opposition to big government, Bush has presided over a far more grandiose expansion of government than even Franklin D. Roosevelt with his New Deal.

Faced with the tragedy of the 9-11 terror attacks — due in part to a dense and impenetrable federal bureaucracy which didn't know what it knew and wouldn't have shared it if it had known — the president created a far denser, far less efficient and far more expensive mega-bureaucracy, the Department of Homeland Security.

Having made one good move, attacking and toppling the Taliban and running al Qaida and Osama bin Laden out of Afghanistan in retaliation for 9-11, the president and his crowd then turned away, half-finished with Job One, and decided to "pre-emptively invade" Iraq, which had precisely nothing to do with the attacks on America.

In one stroke of George W. Bush's pen America went from being a nation that distrusted foreign entanglements and fought wars only when grossly provoked to a nation that attacked first and without credible reason.

That same stroke — and the ensuing five years of war in Iraq — wiped out whatever remained of our reservoir of good will with the rest of the world. The shining city on the hill donned camouflage paint and went to war in the wrong place at the wrong time against the wrong people.

Now George Bush could posture and strut as a wartime president; could style himself The Decider, and could decide which parts of the Constitution and Bill of Rights bought so dearly by generations of Americans he would give or take away.

The mills of the military-industrial complex went into high gear, as the defense contractors jostled for their places at a trough filled each year with half a trillion dollars of taxpayer money. The Republican political operatives milked them all like so many Holstein cows and the Republican lobbyists romped over to Capitol Hill buying congressmen by the baker's dozen to keep the pumps primed.

When one raison du jour for the war in Iraq failed — and all have failed — President Bush and his general-of-the-month could always come up with another to appease the gods of war and keep the machinery turning.

Throughout this ongoing national catastrophe Bush has kept close around him a coterie of incompetents and ideologues always on guard to defend the indefensible and justify the unjustifiable. They brush the lapels of the emperor's suit of gold and whisper that he is right and God will make him shine in American history.

Perhaps the crowning blow came when it was revealed that The Decider is now getting his strategic advice and counsel from none other than Henry Kissinger, the author of genocide in Cambodia; wholesale slaughter in Chile; abandonment of American POWs in Laos; betrayal of South Vietnam, and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

God help us.

ja


� McClatchy Newspapers 2007

New Miss Teen President

99 Ways to Die

+ 1

Finish the Fight...In One More Week

We are just one week away from the release of Halo 3. I'm so excited I could leave a spot on the floor. If you haven't gotten your fill of Halo 3 yet, then I suggest you check out IGN's Halo 3 Launch Center. Check out the new weapons like the flamethrower and the spike grenade, or the new vehicles like the mongoose and the brute chopper. After your done sit patiently and wait,

or...

Check out the 2 available throwback map packs for GRAW2. Both are now free to download and one comes with a new multiplayer game. Me, C, and J Ho have been checking out the new maps. Mountain Falls and Bunkers provide plenty of entertainment, while Boneyard(huh huh, he said bone) provides some great cover from junked vehicles while you get your gun off.

Stay tuned as we get closer to 09/25/07.

IQ Test

I stumbled on this IQ test and thought it was really interesting. Its an actual IQ test based on a bell curve from 60 to 140, with 100 being the median. It's all pattern association and consists of 39 questions in 40 minutes. I suggest you try this test with:
1. A full 40 minutes to devote to it with no distractions
2. Sober

The first 20 or so were fairly easy with increasing difficulty. The next 10 were challenging, and the final few were downright difficult. Let me know what you guys get. BTW, I scored 126.

YMCA overseas

i didn't think the YCMA could be performed any gayer. i was horribly wrong. check out the boy-shield backup dancers.

Rock On...

...monkey

crooks and liars, all of them

EIGHTY-EIGHT!

I was going to call this one. When THE PUNK said he'd like to keep the number 8 somewhere in his NASCAR number, my first thought was, he's gonna buy the 88. Sure enough, this morning on the ESPN bottom line, I see Robert Yates Racing sells the 88 to Hendrick Motorsports. I hope Casey Mears steals it and keeps it for his very own. A small part of me died because I know I'll never hear JHo yell "88!" again.

Does He Know How Full Of Shit He Is?

Read This!!!!


Ordinary life hardly the norm in Baghdad
By Leila Fadel | McClatchy Newspapers

* Posted on Friday, September 14, 2007



"Today, most of Baghdad's neighborhoods are being patrolled by coalition and Iraqi forces who live among the people they protect. Many schools and markets are reopening. Citizens are coming forward with vital intelligence. Sectarian killings are down. And ordinary life is beginning to return."

— President Bush in his speech Thursday on Iraq

BAGHDAD — "Ordinary" isn't a word that residents of Baghdad use to describe their lives.

Gunmen are driving people from neighborhoods in the city's southwest. Electricity, depending on which block you live on, is available as little as two hours a day. Running water, if it's available, is unsafe to drink.

Car bombings are down, but most residents won't leave their neighborhoods, frightened that they'll encounter Shiite Muslim militiamen or Sunni Muslim extremists who'll kill them.

Some markets are reopening in the southern neighborhood of Dora under the watch of U.S. soldiers, but no one from outside the neighborhood visits.

As for schools, it's hard to say: The school year hasn't started yet.

Yousef al Mousawi, a 28-year-old Shiite resident of Sadr City, told this story Friday: Two days ago, his friend Mustafa was kidnapped from his computer shop. He was later found dead, shot in the head. It wasn't unusual. In his neighborhood — controlled by the Mahdi Army militia, loyal to cleric Muqtada al Sadr — he sees bodies every day.

Traffic jams terrify him, he said. He was wounded by a car bomb last year and has traveled the region since for medical treatment.

"The Mahdi Army isn't just killing Sunnis now, they are killing Shiites as well," he said. "I go to university, I'm afraid of suicide bombers and car bombs. I come home and I'm afraid of the Mahdi Army. We're living in fear, endless fear."

Even grocery shopping can be risky. Jassim Mohammed, 53, a Sunni from the neighborhood of Sleikh in northern Baghdad, said he rarely left his home, let alone traveled to marketplaces throughout the city.

This week marked the start of the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims fast from sunup to sundown. The evening meal is a feast, and everyone wants his favorite food. But what Mohammed's family eats is up to Abu Ahmed, the lone grocer in his neighborhood. If he's selling okra, they eat okra stew. If he doesn't have yogurt, they don't eat yogurt. As a Sunni in what's become a Shiite capital, Mohammed said, he has no choice.

"It has become a dream for us to shop from any central market," he said. "No way can I roam freely in Baghdad. I can barely get from home to work, there are so many checkpoints manned by people I don't trust."

"By what standards can I consider this life ordinary?" he asked. "Would Mr. Bush consider my life normal if he knew the details? Would any American?"

Muhsin al Ribaawi, 45, a Shiite, lives in Hurriyah, a once-mixed neighborhood in northwest Baghdad that's been devoid of Sunnis since they were forced out in December. The change was good, Ribaawi thinks. He can travel freely through Shiite neighborhoods throughout the capital, though he never ventures into Sunni enclaves. He no longer sees as many bodies dumped on the streets. As a supervisor for roads and bridges in Baghdad, he used to encounter as many as 20 a day. "I'm so happy for that," he said.

Still, life is hardly back to normal. Dirty and disease-ridden, the water that comes from his tap is "terrifying."

Mohammed al Ani, 36, a Sunni, lives in Mansour, in central Baghdad. When he travels elsewhere in the capital, he maps out his route so that he passes only through Sunni neighborhoods.

"If they (militias) have my ID and they see my tribal name, al Ani, I may lose my life," he said. When he returns home at 5 p.m., the neighborhood is already empty and he shuts himself inside.

On Industry Street in central Baghdad, Mariam Shleimoon, a Christian, said she spent her days cowering in her home. Earlier this week, the Mahdi Army called her husband. They said he'd cursed the militia and that the family must pay — $4,000, a princely sum for a poor man who makes his money repairing kerosene heaters, a skill needed only in winter.

Shleimoon and her husband went to the police but no one would help, so they stay in to avoid the militia. She'd like her children to stay home as well. Her daughter, Rita, barely escaped a bombing, and her son watched a man be killed as he waited to buy bread. But the heat is stifling — they have only two hours of electricity a day, one in the morning and one at night — and her children want to get out of the house.

"We are living in fear," she said. "I thought about selling out and leaving the country but my husband said, 'I will live and die here.' "

In Saidiyah, in southwest Baghdad, Ali Mohammed, 30, a Sunni, said nearly all the stores in his neighborhood had closed as Shiite and Sunni gunmen battled to control the area. The only clinic closed three months ago. It didn't have any medicine, anyway, he said.

A university student, he fears leaving the neighborhood because the checkpoints are manned by police commandos, units known to be rife with Shiite militiamen, who alert gunmen in civilian cars to attack suspected Sunnis. Three days ago, a father and son were killed at a checkpoint, he said.

Bush, he said, "is speaking the opposite of what's going on on the ground."

(McClatchy Newspapers special correspondents Sahar Issa, Mohammed al Dulaimy, Laith Hammoudi and Jenan Hussein contributed to this report.)
McClatchy Newspapers 2007

Ah, The Memories

I'm not sure if this will takeoff or not, but since I am the game info poster for the BTBz site, I figured it was worth a try. With the release of Halo 3 less than two weeks away, I thought it would be cool to share some memories of Halo 2 multiplayer matches as most of the BTBz played the game together. I can think of many such as Red's comments to a 12 year old about said 12 year old's mom, J Ho thinking that everyone (and their mom) that he played against had some kind of mod, but the one I'm going to discuss is the one that is probably still talked about the most to date.

One night while playing Zanzibar with Red and J Ho, I received a phone call. Upon looking at the phone I see that it is Red. I couldn't figure out why he didn't use the Xbox Live Communicator to say what he had to say, but I answered the phone anyway. Red then tells me that he is outside the Zanzibar compound in a Warthog and that I should take control of the turret gun and we could takeout J Ho. It sounded like a good plan to me so I ran to the beach area of the map. When I got there I saw two warthogs playing bumper cars. I immediately jump on the gun of the nearest warthog and start laying down fire at the other warthog until it exploded. The next thing I hear is J Ho saying nice shooting. I pause and say "Oh man, I'm in the wrong warthog!"

Leave Britney Alone!!!!

Chump... Located (Corrected)

Horray! The Actual Chump with Russ has been located in the crowd! The above pic has Chump and Russ somewhere in it. See if you can find them.

After the original post, Z brought to my attention that I found the wrong "me". I thought I was wearing a black shirt with my red Budweiser hat and I foolishly found the wrong person. I am embarrassed, but nonetheless I'm still in the picture. However, in my defense, the person I originally thought was me is wearing almost the same exact attire, sans Russ.

If you need help, you can click here.

where in the world is JHo?

while at the NNCS bristol night race, T and i decided to try to find JHo and Chump in the crowd. this is a bit of a daunting task considering the enormous amount of people who attend the night race, but i was up for the challenge. i knew approximately where JHo was and T called him to have him wave his indians jones hat to help. after several unsuccessful attempts, being dejected, i took a final pic and as i was putting the camera down, out of the corner of my eye i saw his bright yellow shirt on the view screen, but as i said i was putting the camera down. it happened so quickly i couldn't find him precisely again, but i had a more refined search area, so i turned to my GRAW2 training... "spray & pray". i just took loads of pictures of the vast crowd in the now more specific area to analyze later. after all, this was a bristol race, and i had drinking to do and racing to watch.

today, i analyzed the pix, and wouldn't you know it. out of the 20 or so pix i took, only 2 or 3 were clear, and i actually found him in two of those three. fancy. so here's the pic. try to find him (HINT: he's wearing a bright yellow shirt and looks downtrodden, he'd taken off his indian jones hat at this point). you can click on the picture to see a larger version for better hunting. if you can't find him, you can click here where i circled him. you can see them in order, left to right: leslie, chuggie, chug, and JHo.

i tried the same thing with ChumpAss, but he thinks the scoring pole was DIRECTLY in our way (what luck). again, i did my "spray and pray" technique, so now i'm just waiting to hear back from him as to some landmarks, sections, rows, etc. maybe i can do the same for him. i love my canon S2 IS.

Reminds me of that South Park episode this season

GO APPY STATE!!!

Appalachian State's win makes new friends in Columbus

ESPN.com news services

Updated: September 6, 2007, 11:42 AM ET

The enemy of my enemy is my friend -- and I want to wear my new friend's T-shirt!

That's the newest trend among Ohio State fans, whose latest fashion statement is in the colors of Appalachian State, which shocked then-No. 5 Michigan 34-32 on Saturday in the first win by a Division I-AA team over a ranked I-A team.


Hours after the historic defeat, at least one street vendor was doing brisk business selling freshly minted Mountaineers T-shirts near the Ohio State campus. And local stores say they've been swamped with requests for gear bearing the Mountaineers' gold and black colors and logo, as Buckeyes fans take glee in the humiliation of their bitter rival.


"If I had a dollar for every time someone's asked, I could retire," said manager Greg Pierson at Sports Fan Attic.


The mall store on the city's north side planned to stock Appalachian State shirts within the next few days, though just a small number. "It's very popular at the moment, but it'll die down very shortly," Pierson predicted.


Meanwhile, phone lines at the bookstore on the Appalachian State campus in Boone, N.C., have been jammed with orders for Mountaineers merchandise, with many of the calls coming from Ohio.


But the store has had to be careful, because an old state law limits sales at university bookstores to students, faculty and alumni. A couple of Ohio men wanting large numbers of Appalachian State T-shirts had to be turned down, said Lorraine Childers, the bookstore's assistant director.


Smaller orders might get by.


"If people call in and say, 'My uncle is a graduate' or whatever, we really don't have a way to verify that," Childers said.

Pretty Funny Prank

Whoa, Nelly!

What a weekend in college football. I have been waiting since the beginning of January for the games to start back up.

OH - IO
The Ohio State University covers the spread (31) in the defeat of Youngstown State. I couldn't watch the damn game because Time Warner Cable doesn't carry the Big Ten Network. The Big Ten Network (BTN) wants Time Warner (TW) to pay them $1.10 per customer. TW wants to put the BTN on the Digital Sports Package, so those who want it will have to pay for it. BTN wants it on the standard lineup (where everyone who has TW will be paying for it). It is just a way of strong-arming TW into giving the BTN as much money as they can. If you live outside the Big Ten region, The BTN only charges $0.10 per customer. Talk about a scam. But no worries, I have tickets for the OSU / Akron game next Saturday so I will definitely be going to see that game.

Don't give a damn 'bout the whole state of Michigan
Speaking of BTN games I wish I could've seen, Michigan was upset (there needs to be a stronger word than 'upset' when it comes to this loss) by Appalachian State. Thanks to Mike Hart being out for a portion of the game, Michigan's D-fence still in the rebuilding stages, the highly-touted Michigan O thinking they will always win in the end (which they almost did), the D I-AA Champs Appalachian State pull off the biggest UPSET EVER IN COLLEGE FOOTBALL. Never before has an A.P. ranked (just ranked; Michigan was 5TH!) lost to a Division I AA opponent. Oh! How I am lovin' it. Henne and Hart only came back (passing up millions from the NFL) to beat Ohio State and WIN the National Championship. Well, they may be able to beat OSU, maybe; they WILL not win the National Championship. It must suck for them, after week one knowing they will not accomplish the main goal of returning to Michigan. And, by the way, how is Lloyd Carr still coaching that school? I can coach Michigan and still bring in big name recruits (it's fricken' Michigan!!). What he never seems to do is have his team ready for games. Michigan should get an NFL coordinator to take over as head coach...

What's Your Excuse Now, Notre Dame?
like Charlie Weis. All those Notre Dame HOMERS who never even been to the school, live by the school, never seen a game live, but always have the ND jersey on are probably in their parent's basement right now trying to figure out what to say as an excuse to why ND lost. I am sure they will be following this FLOWCHART. What about Charlie Weis? The Genius? The Savior? Who will raise the bar again for Notre Dame Football? What about Charlie Now? He was paid $40 million and he did do well the past couple of years (with Tyrone Willingham's players) The offensive guru used 3 different QB's (talk about desperate). I mean, Georgia Tech!!!! I am not talking about a ranked team. I mean, Georgia Tech!!!! And losing 33-3! Almost a SHUTOUT!!!! AT HOME!!!!! ON OPENING WEEKEND!!!!! Notre Dame does not deserve the exclusive contract with NBC. Last time they were good, Lou Holtz was by-passing every NCAA rule in the book and ND was lowering every academic standard.

Well, time to get going. I need to set up my Sirius Stiletto SL100, and I wanna play some Bioshock before I pick up the Ohio State Tickets for next Saturday.