Tuesday, February 24, 2004
3, 2, 1. Make Rocket Go Now I just fixed a small issue on the new webpage that was driving me nuts. Now the only thing left to finish is making the archive pages look good. Everything else is ready or if it's not ready, the only way I'll find out is through visitors. So please Go Tilt The Fish.
TiltedFish.com
I'm going to set this page to automatically redirect there after a day or two, for now I'm transposing some entries from here to there so that the new site has a small backlog for new visitors.|
Beep, beep, beep, beeeeeeeeeeeeeeep That's the sound of John Edwards' life support system now that Bush just made the big gay marriage proposal. Kerry sucked up all the media attention with his vietnam vet stuff, and now Bush has totally sucked all the oxygen out of the room. I have to ignore somewhat the gay conservatives and the straight conservatives who are so passionate about gay rights issues; this is the party you signed up for and the president you voted for. People like Andrew Sullivan are, of course, very upset because they think you can be conservative while also supporting gay rights. They're right, but what you can't really be is a conservative Republican while also supporting gay rights unless you want to set yourself up for a lot of heartache. Now some prognostication: A lot of weeping and anger from the Andrew Sullivans and the Asparagirls of the world ... and then they vote for Bush 10 months from now. I don't think this issue of Bush's is gonna do anything but fire up his base ("Look at his moral convictions, not his reckless spending!"). I'm voting tommorow (absentee). I still intend to vote for Edwards, but unless he manages to get some serious media attention in the next few days, I'd say he's screwed. I've yet to see a political ad. What does that tell you? I don't think Edwards has the money to get his message out to so many big states on Super Tuesday and I don't think Kerry cares about getting his message out because he knows he's the default pick of those who aren't paying attention to the race. edit: Too bad Bush didn't make this announcement sooner, might've been able to get some liberal republicans to switch parties and vote for Edwards in the democratic primaries if he'd done it a few weeks back.
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Okay The new site still isn't quite ready for launch, but boy oh boy is it close. I was just reading this CNN article about the President's speech attacking "democrats." I guess some of the remarks in there are directed against all the Democratic candidates, but really, they're all about John Kerry. I think this is the big reason that some Republicans fear Edwards (as Edwards loves to boast on his website). The Bush strategy thinkers started out planning against Kerry, then got swept up into believing Dean would win like everyone else and focused on him, and then he died and they're focusing on Kerry again, and now they're nervous that Edwards is going to win. That's why I'm confused by Bush singling Kerry out somewhat in his attacks. Either his attacks hurt Kerry and make Edwards look better or they help Kerry by solidifying him as the front-runner. I think Edwards is in trouble, frankly. The media coverage of the race has dropped to nil. And Kerry seems to do best when nobody's paying attention and they just go "Ehh, I guess I'll vote for Kerry." Kerry can't look bad and Edwards can't look good if nobody's looking.
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Monday, February 23, 2004
Transition This post and the last few ones on this site may be the only ones I carry over to the soon-to-be-finished new blog. I don't want to bother with removing all the conflicting html color font tags from hundreds of posts so I'll probably only take the last month or so. And if this is this blog's penultimate post (depending on how quickly I or someone else can fix my new site's stylesheets), I want it to be on a serious topic: Acne Facial Washes. In high school I feel like I never really had much acne until senior year, and I focused mostly on attacking individual pimples with Neutrogena Spot-On Acne Treatment. The best way to describe this Acne Treatment would be a reference: Remember the scene in Aliens where the marines are rushing to close the door to their tank, but an alien sticks its head in at the last second? And then the marine blows the alien's head off and the acid in its blood shoots everywhere burning the arms and faces of marines while eating through them and their armor like a warm knife through butter, remember? Well this stuff is only a little stronger than that. That doesn't mean it actually gets rid of the pimple, but it does leave a violent, burnt area of red skin around the pimple. It's basically the Russian Scorched Earth policy but on the scale of pores. This product comes in a small white tube that never actually seems to run out; you'll stop using the tube and then a month later try it again only to find gallons more of salicylic acid in there, ready to continue the fight againist pore-blocking bacteria. Once I reached college I decided to switch to a more proactive strategy by buying a daily facial wash. My main criteria for selecting the brand of facial wash was how masculine the container was. Men's hygiene products follow strict rules when it comes to appearance. They come in three colors: Black, black-silver, and medical. Just look at any bottle of Axe Deoderant, and you'll see the quintessential male design. Medical is a special exception: Basically it means the product is completely homely in every respect and struts its medical virtues above all else. This is your dandruff shampoo or foot fungus ointment; they come in hardcore packaging and the substance looks like something a veterinarian would rub into your dog's ears. Facial washes however, only come in three colors: violet purple, lavendar green, and orange. I went with orange because it's the closest to medical. This left me with Neutrogena Acid Face Wash. Using this product is a lot like having the acid-spitting alien from earlier spit orange goo all over your face, and then wiping the burning goo into your face for 2 minutes waiting unsuccessfully for the advertised "suds" to appear. This product seemed to work for me for a while, but it also seems to be burning my face off. It dries the hell out of your face and leaves dry skin everywhere, and though it claims to "break the break-out cycle," it seems to only delay smaller break-outs until they all burst out at once in some last-ditch battle of the bulge. So now that the bottle is running out, I want to switch brands in the hope of a more effective, less skin-burning face wash. After a lengthy discussion with some women in the bathroom, I decided I should try some stuff from companies with made-up names like Cetaphil and Phisoderm. Much like Neutrogena, each of these companies has a name that sounds like it could be either a medical term or the name of an arch-enemy of the Klingon Empire ("THE PHISODERMS SHALL NEVER CONTROL THE ALPHA QUADRANT!"). Cetaphil I discounted right away because they never use the word acne. I want a company that knows what the hell they're talking about. So that leaves me with Phisoderm or the purple stuff that a bunch of other people use. The purple stuff says it prevents wrinkles; that screams "I'm a product for 35-year-old women!" The Phisoderm says it has a "fresh from the Spa" scent. I don't want a scent. It also uses the exact same acid as the Neutrogena making me wonder what the difference is. It also has a girly bottle with a green top and a slogan that sounds very much like "Clear Control: For the Working Woman of TODAY!" I'm thinking I could justify the phisoderm because its name is so clinical. I plan to investigate more options in the bathroom tommorow by going through the lockers in the bathroom and
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Sunday, February 22, 2004
Some things never change Nader's running. Huzzah to him for wasting our time. The quote being spread over instapundit was that this is good for America because he's going to challenge all the laws that keep third parties and independents off of ballots in many states. Seems to me he could do that with a token campaign without ever asking a single person to vote for him. I don't really see how jumping through all the hurdles of these many states (such as getting millions of signatures) changes the fact those hurdles exist; it'd make more sense if he was challenging those restrictions in court. I don't see Nader pulling as many votes as last year, but just the chance of him spoiling the election has got Democrats pissed. Hopefully the Deaniacs stick with the Democratic party, though I bet a lot of them are gonna try to follow Nader and then get disilluisioned when they find out that no one can live up to the messianic image they've developed for Dean. Work on the new website is going smashingly. I'm notoriously lazy so I refuse to put a deadline in place, but it feels like maybe one or two more days of editing before the thing will be ready for launch. Then there'll be a few weeks of tweaking but so far the mascot is a big success. Some girls have already told me they'd love to wear it on a Tshirt, but you should consider that college girls wear Paul Frank's exceedingly expensive and uncreative monkey mascot shirts, so their opinions are not to be trusted.
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Friday, February 20, 2004
A broken metaphor Let me set the scene. It was a crowded dorm-room floor. Had people been smoking, it would've been smoke-filled. 6 men and women entered and placed their 2 dollar buy-ins. Only one remained. Yes, I won a 2 dollar poker game for the first time ever. My 10 dollar win brings me about even since I've lost my last 5 or 6 times. And it is through the tortured metaphor of linking politics with low-stakes gambling that I'm going to make one last push for John Edwards. I was one of the last two men standing. The metaphor started off strong with two other candidates, errr, cardplayers, beating each other into oblivion allowing another to make a big comeback in Iowa, errr, the dormroom. Jessica represents Wesley Clark because she had early success and then pissed it away by being weird. Andy represents John Kerry because he started out fine, died, and then was reborn when Kyle (Gephardt) and Justin (Dean) killed each other off. I'm John Edwards. I pulled off some good early wins but then things looked a little blank for a while as I waited for a 2-man field. Finally, I let lady luck guide me and I slapped around Kerry and his overwhelming stack of chips to take the win an hour later. Sure, the analogy makes no sense because delegates aren't poker chips (though super delegates can change their mind at any time), but it was all about momentum. All I needed was one big win and suddenly Kerry, err, Andy got restless and started trying to go all-in on every hand. I then chose my battles and emerged victorious. If I were giving odds, I'd peg Bush's chances of being reelected at 67% (down from a recent 75%), and I'd peg Edwards chances of beating Kerry at about 25%. I know that delegate wise his chances are probably lower than that, but all he really needs is to win March 2 and momentum can carry him to the win. Minor Announcement: My new website will be named TiltedFish.com. The title will be explained at a later date.
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Wednesday, February 18, 2004
And what brand of muffin did you have today? Silly me, I never gave a link to Scott and Brooke's site, but seeing as how all my readers come from Scott and Brooke, it still doesn't seem all that pressing to me. Here. It's said that the scourge of bloggerdom is people making new sites, asking you to link to them, and only having one post on the site. I guess Scott and Brooke were terrified of following that example or maybe they both just learned to type or something because they've put up about 400 posts over the course of their first day. It's an interesting schizophrenia with Scott sitting in a studio being paid to goof off and write messages about imaginary miatas and Brooke writing messages via evil mobile technology systems about Los Angeles. Now to affairs of state. It's my intention at this moment to build a new site. I have some webspace at my disposal, and I've picked out an obscene but memorable URL (I can't tell you what it is because it's the last URL left available on the internet and if someone snatches it up, I'll be stuck with something like siguy39393MikeRoweSoft4bizerkeley.net.tv.uk). I may stick with blogspot software (that'd be the easiest since I already have it set up on my webspace), or I may switch to something needlessly fancy like Scott and Brooke's zionist fetish site. Either way, this site will probably stay up in archive form only once the new site launches. I just feel that there's only so many tri-color posts you can make before your eyes start bleeding and people start asking if you hired a local fourth grade class to design your website for you.
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Changes? The question mark is there because I enjoy having 3 or 4 headlines in a row that have the same format (see: Wuzzah?, Fizzle?, and Fiddly-Ba?). Maybe it won't last and I'll be back to ignoring this site as usual, but recently I've felt a lot more interest in writing up quick blurbs about the primaries and the upcoming matchup with President Bush ala 50,000 other better and more professional blogs. I'm considering redoing the page again, and this time, I mean, really, really redoing it. I think this current design didn't turn out well because I was trying to make it look good with my long established tri-color posts. Lately though, all these colorful posts are starting to look stupid and childish to me. I'm considering starting afresh with a new title, a more dignified look, and a new blogspot; I'd leave this one up for archive purposes only. Just an idea.
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Tuesday, February 17, 2004
Fiddly-Ba? Drudge predicts good things for Edwards in Wisconsin, but then again, his Kerry story so far looks like petty rumor-mongering beneath even his dangerously low standards. Apparently Scott and Brooke made a new webpage together with a name almost inviting online terrorist attack. Protocols of the Yuppies of Zion? Not only does it have a 20 dollar bill on the front (take that anarchists and communists!), it also has zion in the title (take that small percentage of the middle east who can afford internet access!). Makes me long for the simplicity of Le Blog. Their blog software, I must say however, is simply sparkling. Very nifty. I wouldn't be surprised if it could do your taxes for you while you read Scott's angry rants against major software companies or Brooke's angry condemnations of self-hating Americans.
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