Whoa! That hooker looks just like my wife!

Somehow there is a Polish joke in this. Married guy in Warsaw, Poland goes to a brothel, where he runs into his wife, who apparently worked there. Seems she had told him that she was working in a store in a nearby town. Guess not.

Now they're getting divorced.

Too bad, just when they found a common interest.

You can read it here.

This is news? Really?

So some American nut-job joins al-Qaeda, runs off to the land-o-sand, and then releases a video where he renounces his American citizenship, tears up his passport, and urges Muslims to attack Bush on his upcoming middle east trip.

CNN reports this as if it's news.

Seriously, did someone at CNN say "whoa! This American dude joined al-Qaeda THREE YEARS AGO and today we got a video of him tearing up his passport!" What, no video available today of Britney in a straight jacket?

Careful what you say.

If you're blogging in Saudi Arabia, don't be too critical of the government.

This guy went to jail for blogging about what he believed were lies being propogated by the Saudi government. Fouad Ahmed al-Farhan apparently wrote to support political figures in SA who are considered supporters of terrorism by the government there.

In an interesting twist, the Bush administration has condemed the arrest as contrary to the principles of freedom of speech. I find this a curious dichotomy given BushCo's general attitude toward anybody who could even marginally be considered as supporting the supporters of terrorists.

Anyway, I won't be blogging from Saudi Arabia anytime soon.

Iowa Caucuses - Who cares?

Tonight a bunch of people representing a minority of whatever political party in which they claim membership will join with others in a state of absolutely no political importance whatsoever and "vote" for who they believe their party should nominate for president.



And my interest in their opinions is far less than the length of the above sentence. In a state that reflects absolutely nothing about any part of America I am familiar with, in a state with only seven electoral votes, the major political parties will decide which candidates are worthy of continued support.



Why is this so ridiculous? Aside from the fact that, seriously, does anybody outside of Iowa care what people in Iowa think?, wouldn't it make more sense to ensure that the candidates being supported are capable of winning the states that actually matter come general election time?



A candidate needs 270 electoral votes to become president. That total is reached with just the 11 following states: California (55), Texas (34), New York (31), Florida (27), Illinois (21), Pennsylvania (21), Ohio (20), Michigan (15), North Carolina (15), Georgia (15), New Jersey (15), and any one of the remaining 39 states.



Yes, that's right - to become president a candidate must win a grand total of 12 of the 50 states. So why, I ask, does anybody give a crap about the other 38? Seriously, wouldn't the wise candidate focus on the states that matter and win those primaries? If you can carry the states that would get you elected in the general election, then it would seem that your party would have a pretty good incentive to fund your campaign.

Instead, over the next few weeks we'll hear about Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina - states that account for a mere 19 electoral votes. States of absolutely no individual political relevance.

Why not simply run a six week primary system where you start at the top of the list and hold primaries in two states per week, with the remaining 38 states holding their primary on the last week - allowing each candidate to pick whatever camel-back-breaking-state they choose (since they only need one, it doesn't really matter). Then, based on those results, decide what two candidates you'll send to the convention and let the remaining states battle it out on the convention floor - the way it used to be.

UPDATE:

Iowa caucuses are over, and, best I can tell, Kansas pulled it out over Virginia Tech in the Orange Bowl. In a game full of turnovers and big plays, it became more and more clear that if Oregon had remained healthy, they would truly have been a juggernaut. Nobody in the country could have laid a hand on them.

Oh, and I think Barak Obama and Mike Huckabee won something tonight too.

Who has time to blog?

Jebus, it has been since mid-September since I've written anything. What have I been doing? (I mean, other than not blogging about anything).

I used to try blogging about politics, but it just pisses me off. How many times can I write about how everybody running for everything are pompous, vacuous gasbags who could just as easily be replaced with one of my daughter's countless stuffed animals. Would anybody notice?

I also tried blogging about sports, or about the UO. But that got too tedious - people who follow that stuff want more detail than I frankly care about. Plus, I don't know anything.

I tried reviewing movies, and that was actually a bit of fun, except I stopped going to the movies. I could blog about what I watched on TV - but that would just expose how much TV I watch.

I could blog about my day-to-day life, but not even I want to read about that.

The other thing that always pisses me off is how much time it actually takes. See, in my opinion, a truly thorough blog entry includes hyperlinks to whatever I've referenced. That takes time. But to make it worse, at least 20% of the time something happens and the blog doesn't upload, or the links don't take, and then the whole thing is lost forever - so I just quit. I really have no patience for writing something twice.

So, I guess I'll go back to blogging about stuff I don't actually care about, but who knows, maybe one time I'll write something that will stand the test of time and get me own show on E!, or maybe MSNBC.