Posted by Unknown
Jumat, 12 Agustus 2005
Hey All, welcome to another rousing edition of beep boppin' and scattin'! I am your host Adeola the magnificent. Today we discuss the phenomenon that is putting your collar up, Nigerian debt Collectors, and The Man imposing his rule outside of the workplace.
First off, T.G.I wish I was dead, or at least sleeping. What kind of sick joke is a Friday anyway? So close to the weekend you can taste it, but having to work an extremely long work day just to get to it, one made even longer by the thoughts of the coming weekend. This will actually be the first Friday I have worked a full day in about 2 weeks. That is also not helping, but at least I have a job to go to and an income, can't say the same for many.
Now for the topics. I would like to point your attention to an article at the Village Voice. It's a very in depth and reasonable article about that ubiquitous fashion, guys (and I guess girls) putting their collars up on a polo shirt although it can really be on any shirt. I really don't know how I feel about this whole collar thing. Actually, the article does a good job of pointing out the good and the bad points of the style. What does it mean? Why do people do it? Why do people hate it? If you do it, will guys want to be you and girls want to try and change you? I am not really sure, but I don't have a very long neck and my collar down is usually at the level of most people who put their collars up, I just don't have the real estate to pull this thing off, or up as the case may be. What do you guys think of this. Is it interesting, or just dumb? The article raises a good point about the people that hate it and why, because it looks like the person is trying to hard. That is, when they see someone with a collar up they picture the person getting dressed and finally popping the top with this feeling that they are now cool, and it just infuriates them. That is pretty true, that is what I think sometimes, but who am I to judge someone for being fashionable. I wear those stupid Euro shoes (if you don't know what those are look down, you are probably wearing them right now), wear button down shirt out with jeans, and usually have some type of funky watch on. Am I trying to hard, or am I just trying to look good? That I guess is for the masses to decide.
I received these pictures(to the right) in a random email from a buddy of mine. The forward had a message in it that talked about how these guys were probably from a Nigerian gang. I, wanting to defend my country men as not, immediately defended them and said that I have never seen this in my very limited time in Nigeria, and my parents had never mentioned any fucking hyenas anywhere. Well apparently my parents just have not been in a while and I was just not there for long enough because these people are surely from Nigeria. They are apparently debt collectors. Yo, if some dude shows up to my house with a giant chain, a stick and a hyena, you better believe I will pay him some way. Thank God all we have to worry about here are the relentless phone calls, and possible legal action of various insitutions. All of a sudden court looks like an excellent idea. By the way, the monkey also belongs to one of the people in the group. I think he is there just to mix things up by throwing feces around your house and causing you to become generally more agitated as he leaps around your home screeching and breaking things. Probably doesn't keep the hyenas that calm either.Last but not least, a quick word regarding an article about how companies now have the power over our freetime. Its not bad enough that they have us for 8 hours a day and 5 days a week, but now if I want to hang out with a co-worker after work and grab a beer or a bite to eat, my boss can tell me I can't. I doubt this is really going to be practiced, but then why is the power there in the first place? I would use the phrase "mad sketchy" to describe this policy.
Baca Selengkapnya ....
Posted by Unknown
Kamis, 04 Agustus 2005
When I first started this blog I had a few articles in mind that I would talk about to get my creative writing juices flowing. I never did write anything about those articles and just figured I would let it go thinking I would find other interesting things to write about in the future. Well it seems that one of those topics has re-surfaced and I can't pass up the chance this time. The title should give you an idea of what it is, but just in case, the issue is about teaching intelligent design in our public high schools alongside evolution as a competing theory of how man as we know him came to live on this earth as we do today. I pride myself on my ability to hear both sides of an arguement and give everyone a fair chance to make a point, in this case however I am going to have to agree with most of the scientific community that this should not even be a debate, much less a real issue to weigh in on.Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory no matter how many people say it is. For those of you that don't know, intelligent design (better known as creationism) is the simple notion (and it really is one of the more simplistic ideas around) that we as human beings are SO complex biologically and in our current state of being that it is simply impossible for a guiding force to not have had some type of involvement in it. Basically we are too advanced to have gotten to this point of our existence with such a simple and misguided idea as evolution. Natural selection is hooey apparently. Most rational thinking people see this as a way for religion, notably Christianity, to find it's way into a public school system that has separated itself from the faith ages ago (technically). The proponents of this "Theory" say that it's valid and to not allow it is to willingly leave out of the public forum a whole chunk of educational goodness. These people are very serious and are trying very hard to get this piece of trash they like to call scientific thinking into the public high school curriculum, maybe even down to the elementary and middle school curriculum. As if it was not hard enough to get youngsters to understand the mystery that is long division, we are going to teach them two separate theories of how humans came to be on this earth, and we expect this to be better for them. Our educational system is already lacking behind most of the modern world, now the hard christian right has figured out another way for use to fall behind. If this is such a valid theory then how come it is only being pushed in the US? Are we really that advanced that we know something the other 5 billion people in the world don't know. My idea is we don't, we just have more idiots and self righteous monkeys in this country who are actually willing to argue for the inclusion of such a ridiculous idea into minds of growing adults. I'm looking at you, Mr.Bush. The President recently said that he believes intelligent design should be taught in schools in order to address all the possibilities that could be when speaking about human developement. Ok I have a theory that I would like to include as well. We actually came from a super intelligent race of sea monkeys that lived on this world in the oceans before the break up of the continents. Where are these sea monkeys now? Obviously they have migrated to the new 10th planet found beyond the reaches of Pluto.
Baca Selengkapnya ....
Posted by Unknown
Sabtu, 30 Juli 2005
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.
Baca Selengkapnya ....
Posted by Unknown
Jumat, 15 Juli 2005
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.
Baca Selengkapnya ....
Posted by Unknown
Rabu, 13 Juli 2005
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!!!
Posted by Unknown
Jumat, 08 Juli 2005
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.
Baca Selengkapnya ....
Posted by Unknown
Selasa, 05 Juli 2005
...
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.
Now for the topics. I would like to point your attention to an article at the Village Voice. It's a very in depth and reasonable article about that ubiquitous fashion, guys (and I guess girls) putting their collars up on a polo shirt although it can really be on any shirt. I really don't know how I feel about this whole collar thing. Actually, the article does a good job of pointing out the good and the bad points of the style. What does it mean? Why do people do it? Why do people hate it? If you do it, will guys want to be you and girls want to try and change you? I am not really sure, but I don't have a very long neck and my collar down is usually at the level of most people who put their collars up, I just don't have the real estate to pull this thing off, or up as the case may be. What do you guys think of this. Is it interesting, or just dumb? The article raises a good point about the people that hate it and why, because it looks like the person is trying to hard. That is, when they see someone with a collar up they picture the person getting dressed and finally popping the top with this feeling that they are now cool, and it just infuriates them. That is pretty true, that is what I think sometimes, but who am I to judge someone for being fashionable. I wear those stupid Euro shoes (if you don't know what those are look down, you are probably wearing them right now), wear button down shirt out with jeans, and usually have some type of funky watch on. Am I trying to hard, or am I just trying to look good? That I guess is for the masses to decide.
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