The Past Couple of Weeks

It's been a long time, I have been needless to say kind of busy, also extremely lazy. Nothing particularly interesting has happened in these past two weeks. Rugby practice with my team The Rochester Aardvarks continues with the season to start September 10th (if anyone is interested in watching me and my buddies run all over some older men your more than welcome, schedule is on the website). We apparently will be featured in The Rochester Business Journal, to be published sometime this week We are in a story that talks about what working types do for fun in Rochester, should be some really good exposure for the team, and I'll take my 15 minutes wherever I can get it. The women who took the picture was pretty zany but nice, even though she was going to a party and was has a pretty nice dress on she was definitely laying in the dirt taking some weird angled shots, you kinda had to be there. Anyway, I will post the pictures from it when I get them.

Yesterday I went to a party at my buddies house where I ran into some old friends from HS, it was very unexpected. Met some cute girls, got crunked and chilled on a rooftop till early in the morning, totally worth the airplane ride home this weekend (where I am currently writing from). Got some pretty good pictures of everyone, but they have not been edited yet and are not ready for internet viewing, but I'll find some definitive picture and post it at a later date.

Nothing too great to report in the tech and politics department. I have read some ridiculous stores about the tragedy in Niger as well the on-going saga that is "Plamegate". I really cannot believe that since Watergate we have not come up with a better name to describe white house affiliated scandals. Are reporters just lazy or are we just comfortable with the naming scheme? Whatever it is, it should stop immediately. Finally I would like to announce that I have found a new favorite magazine. It's called Radar, and it's a general pop, politics and Humor magazine. I have just begun to read it and have fallen in love. Witty and very intelligent articles are what it has to offer with the first cover proclaiming to give you the secrets you'll need to be famous without actually possessing any talent. On the cover President Bush putting a medal around Paris Hilton's neck, you really should just read it. I will attempt to blog about things I see in the media before they get to it, but frankly I just don't have the resources they do.

The CIA as kidnappers, and the hub-bub over Supreme Court Justices

Read a few f'ed up articles today, mostly on the Voice website. Someone is finally is doing something about the outsourcing of torture in this country (to use an over-used term). For those that don't know what I'm talking about, for the past couple of years during America's war on Terror, Gitmo and Abu Ghraib have not been the only places where questionable acts on prisoners have taken place. The US has been engaging in a practice known as Extraordinary Rendition. This practice just reaks of immaturity. Since we can't legally torture people here for info (which does not mean it does not happen) we send them to other countries where we know there are no limits on torture, to have them interrogated there. The administration says that they don't condone torture then turn their faces the other way as the countries we should be labasting for their terrible treatment of humans get us our much needed information. Finally a country has refused to let this type of thing happen under their noses. The Country of Italy was location of one of the CIA's covert missions to kidnap a suspect, take him back to his own country (Egypt) and have him tortured. The Italian Governement has long been after this guy, he was already under surveillance so it's not like everyone necessarily thought he was innocent. The Italians did NOT know that the CIA was going to pull a move like they did. So the Italians traced the CIA agents responsibe for the kidnapping and issued arrest warrants for them. Classic. I wonder how this is going to play out on the US media. There have been many references to this practice of rendition in various stories, but I have yet to really see it on news magazines or local news channels. I wonder how they are gonna explain this one? Pobably with the lame "They would do worse to you and your family if they captured you!". Yeah, it's real likely that Mr. and Mrs. podunk living in the middle of no where are gonna get captured and totured. For the full story, check out the voice article here.

Tom Tomorrow graces us with another awesome cartoon. This one is particularly good because Supreme Court fights like this don't happen that often. My favorite part is when they nominate Cthulu: Destroyer of Worlds as Supreme Court Justice, freaking hilarious. I had no idea who Cthulu was at the time so I looked it up, here's a picture for your pleasure.

In all honesty though, this fight over supreme court justices is getting pretty heated. After O'Connor's surprise that she was stepping down, Rehnquist (who in my opinion is so old he should not even be allowed to drive) made a surprise announcement that he won't be stepping down despite his many health problems and frequent hospital visits. Honestly, there should be some type of governing body that can decide when a justice should step down. This man is not fit for any other job in the world besides listening to cases of great importance and speaking his opinion about them. When is his horrendous age (and by association his connection with the current state of American Culture) going to outweigh his supposed knowledge in legal matters. I think Supreme Court Justiceship should have a statute of limitations. For some telling info on the way the Justices come to power, please read this article from the voice. Apparently these days you can buy youself a supreme court judge.

A Tourney in Canda

This past weekend I went to Ottawa, Canada for a weekend long rugby tournament. It was just as good as everyone who had ever gone to it told me it would be. There were no hotels since these fields were in the middle of nowhere, so everyone camped on the sidelines of the 4 practice/tournament fields that they had (there was also a main field that was beautiful and lush and had stands for it). There were about 200-300 people there, men's and women's teams, from all over the place. We entered the social division (there was a competitive division as well, but no one really wanted to prepare for that) and we took third out of eight teams. Not likes that is too bad or anything, but we probably should have taken first. I arrived Friday night and after helping to set up the tent went straight to boozing. When I awoke on Saturday morning I could not believe I was sleeping in a tent. I barely even knew where I was and I needed to get up and play a 30 minute game of rugby (usually a rugby game is 80 minutes, but in tournaments the halves are reduced because of the number of games). After the first 15 minutes of play I was all set and the feeling of nausea I had been sporting for several hours was gone. All our games were done by about 1pm so we just spent the rest of the day eating and relaxing in the sun. It was an incredibely stress free and fun time, definitely needed.


At night everyone headed over to the bar that was above the field house (I know, it was hot shite) and proceeded to get into a heated dance party which was seriously one of the highlights of the night. Mad old music was played (I heard rumpshaker and the first song on the jock jams cd just to name a few) and everyone had a good time. The other huge event of the weekend happened at around 12 midnight that night. It was a co-ed naked rugby game, seriously. 15 girls and 15 dudes (mixed teams) stripped down to their birthday suits and started a midnight game of rugby and it was as hot as it sounds. Now you have to understand there are a lot of bigger girls who play rugby so not all the girls out there made it worth watching, but my hat goes off to the 5 or so that did. It was truly awesome. A buddy of mine who was not playing in the game went out and shot some pictures before he was tackled by one of the naked players (a guy) that also happened to be one of our teammates. It was the highlight of a game that lasted only 5 minutes because the cops showed up, don't ask me who the party pooper was that did that.

Sunday morning was much better for me, much worse for others. Apparently a bunch of guys stayed out at night and spent bucket loads of cash on shots of Yukon Jack. While this is not the only reason we lost our game at 9am in the morning, I am sure it had something to do with it. Then that was the end of that, we watched the finals and some of us subbed for one of the teams (it was a weird situation, another team in our division were full of guys we knew so a lot of that team acted as subs for our team, and we did the same for them, needless to say the semi-finals where we had to play and eventually lose to them was a weird one) then we all took off. We watched Starsky and hutch on my laptop which is a hilarious movie. See that and Envy if you ever get a chance, Ben Stiller is hilarious.



I bet you thought I would dissapoint and not put any "proof" of the naked rugby game didn't ya? Well I am not going to put anything that bad here, but trust me this was the only girl wearing her skivies. ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM!!!

The G8 Summit and the Live 8 concert

During the pst couple weeks the number 8 has been used so much in the news that I think we should just lay off of it for the rest of the year. If you have not heard of the Live 8 concert series yet, maybe you were in one of the poor countries that this concert was meant to highlight. It starred such rockers as Madonna, Jay Z, Def Leoppard, and Destiny's Child in a union meant to address continuing African poverty and the means by which these nations are kept in the state that they are in. I saw some clips of the concerts and it looked like a lot of fun, that is until they spotlighted the very reason for the concerts existence by showing horrendous pictures of real African poverty. Come on now, I came to see Beyonce not starving children and their malnourished bodies. I guess that was one of the few ways that the concert could keep focus on its real purpose although I am sure most of the audience just went and enjoyed the acts then went home to continue their daily lives. In all honesty if I was there in Philly, I would have done the same. I will hand it to Bono and Bob Geldorf though, for what its worth they got a lot of airtime and were able to at least bring the message of African poverty to many people who might never have taken note of the G8 summit going on this week in Scotland.

The G8 Summit this year focused on the continuing problem of African poverty along with addressing such concerns as the Kyoto protocols and agricultural subsidies. For some more details on these problems check out this article from the Village Voice. There was a big call to forgive the large debts of many African nations in order to allow them to progress to a modern industrial era that the member countries of the G8 council enjoy. I've read a few articles on this summit and one thing I have gotten out of them is that George W. never lets the chance for being a royal ass pass him by. Here are some choice quotes from an article I read in the new York Times. The full text can be found here.

"The reason it (Kyoto protocol) didn't work for the world is many developing nations weren't included in Kyoto," Mr. Bush said. "I've also told our friends in Europe that Kyoto would have wrecked our economy. I don't see how you can be president of the United States and agree to an agreement that would have put a lot of people out of work."

The basis of the protocol by the way is to have industrial nations curb there emissions of greenhouse gases through technological innovation and alternative fuel and energy systems, while developing nations that don't have access to current industrial methods, much less alternative methods of prodution and manufacturing to develop to a level of modernity. Why they would be included here I am not quite sure. As for agreements that would put people out of work, I think the POTUS and his administration have made enough concessions to their corporate play pals that have cost the American public many jobs, maybe they can pass on the protocol. By the way, all member states of the G8 council have ratified this protocol except for the US. We are apparently so advanced in our ways of thinking that we can tell the rest of the world to shut the hell up and let us do the driving.

Here's another one of my favorite quotes:

Acknowledging that anti-war feeling is "current wisdom these days," the president added that "following public polls is like chasing your tail" and that in Iraq and elsewhere, "I truly believe we're laying the foundation for peace."

Why would you follow what the public, the people who put you in power, want you to do? That would be like a total democracy, or at the very least a republic which is not what we have going on here. We the people of the US don't really know whats going on, the 55% or so of the public that now disagrees with the war just don't understand the kind of work that it takes to spread peace throughout the world. It's a bloody and murderous process, get over it.

Sometimes I really feel like I'm living in a dream world where a madman has taken office and there is no way to get him out of there, a feeling I am sure many can echo.

July 4th is the Shiznito!

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And I'm back. I have not written here in a bit, many might have been worried that this would turn out like my early webpage (see first post for more on this), but I have just been a bit busy and have not had anything really urgent to write about. But I'm back now, still with nothing that interesting but maybe it'll be good anyway.

I'm coming off of an incredible 5 day vacation from work that has been everything it sounds like. From Friday till today I have been living a life without the daily grind. Life, by my own rules, and it has been great. Almost what a good vacation should be but I was still in Rochester instead of some resort like my roommate in Jamaica, but you gotta take what you can get. I did lot of cool things like watch tv and visit friends with large houses in the country to watch their much bigger tv's.

I did find a twilight zone marathon but skipped most of it for a kick ass bbq at my place where the theme were a concotion called the mojito. If you have never heard of this drink you should ask somebody. They are the shiznite. If the the concentration of the ingredients is a little off the drink will still be a refreshing summer time creation. Nobody that had it yesterday asked for less that two, those that did drink less that two were just late to the bbq and we had run out of ingredients.

I even got to light some fireworks during this 4th of July vacation. I have a buddy who had enough fireworks for his own show, and it would have definitely been an hour long, if not longer. There really is nothing better than blowing something up, it ranks right up there with something on fire. The kind of things you can come up will just amaze you. The last creation we had was to tie a roman candle to a large bottle rocket and try and time the candle to shoot shot out before the bottle rocket exploded. There are so many things wrong with this idea now that I think about it I can't believe I even conceived it. At first we though of putting the roman candle downwards so as the rocket went up it would have a booster firing look to it. The downside to this (which we did not immediately realize) was that then the shiny exploding balls of fire would be shooting back at us. Yes, there was beer there. After we scrapped that idea, we put them both facing the same way taped them together and put them on what we thought was a sturdy wasps nest in the pipe. That gave way and our creation fell down the pipe and it was pretty impossible to retrieve it. Many methods were used to try and light it while it was in the pipe: throwing flaming paper balls down it, shooting a roman can straight into it, firing another bottle rocket into it. The last attempt involved pouring kerosene down the pipe. See what I mean? Mad things wrong with this picture, but the thing never went off, no one was injured and we had an awesome time.

As a sidenote, I was watching Fox News (briefly) when they were doing a special report on fireworks safety. They were using little plastic dolls to illustrate the damage that these fireworks could do. My question is, Why would you show a kid with little exposure to fireworks how cool it is to blow stuff up with them? I watched the report, they had little fireworks next to these 10" plastic figures, and they would just blow the hell out of them. It was mad cool and not at all scary. Maybe some kids were deterred, but most that knew little of the subject were now hardcore fans. Those that already knew how cool fireworks were (like myself) just watched because it was cool.

As my vacation comes to a sad sad end, I would to like to leave a few reminders/tips for life in general because you never know where it might take you:

1) If a girl calls you because you met her some random weekend and you don't remember her, don't tell her that. Look for a way out of it and pray to not get caught. This might seem obvious, but it wasn't to me. I played the honest card and it turned out to be a joker, right in my face.

2) Trees are like magnets to little balsa wood model planes bought from corner drugstores. The trees swallow them whole and force you to do ridiculous things if you want to get them back. Funny to watch though, as the intended flight path just gets interrupted with leaves and branches. It never really gets old.

3) No matter what, as soon as you pull out a wrist rocket (a glorified slingshot with a extra part acting as a brace against your forearm) everyone sits down to think of what would be awesome ammo. A few ideas are said and shotdown for various reasons,some objects are to light, some not a good shape for the sling. Then someone will eventually name rocks as the perfect ammo. Now, we all know that a slingshots and rocks make an awesome and horrendously destructive combination. The reason everyone is thinking about what would be great ammo is because you all know you shouldn't use rocks. It's just unsaid until someone says it, and as you run out of ideas, rocks start to make a lot of sense. About 5 minutes after that the sling shot is put away and the conversation switches topics. That's as long as it took to finally decide to use rocks, shoot off a few and having an undoubtedly awesome time before finally shooting something and either causing serious property damage or getting mad close to doing so.

4) The chick above this post is a good friend. She was only in Rochester for the night, but we still got a chance to hang out. She's mad cool and gorgeous and everyone should have a friend like her. It was a good end to my vacation.