Testing?

Could you guys do me a favor and post comments to let me know if you can do so, even without Blogger accounts? Otherwise.... *slams head into desk*

For the octopuses

The Happy Octopus, circa October, 2004.

the (mis)adventures of little trooper sugar kat: the interweb doth mock the little trooper at every turn!

My columns are broken. I don't know why they are broken, they just are.

Well, no. That's not true. They were working perfectly fine before I added the Blogger commenting code. Now they are messed up and not columning. Why are they not columning? I do not know. I don't know HTML. I'm an idiot.

Why, why won't you be all columny for me, my dear blog columns? Wherefore dost thou stack one upon the other, rather than being conveniently arranged as before, side by side? Why dost thou mess with my tired head? Why won't this code work like it's supposed to? It looks like there are columns in there, but you defy all columny coding and persist in your one-column state.

You do break my heart, not-columny columns of blog. There are but two of you, yet you do defy me at every turn. I know not what to do. I weep. I weep bitter, stupid, non-computer-geek tears. This thwarting by simple blog columns in their persistent state of non-columnness is perfect illustration of why I will never obtain a good-paying job.

Ah, columns. You show my true weakness. I am but a poseur, you say in your constant defiance of my pathetic attempts at corrective code. I do not belong. Perhaps you are right, blog columns, but I do so wish you would not be so rude as to illustrate my n00bitity so publicly.

EDIT 2:26 AM: I also just noticed that the one main column narrows to lead into the second column which is currently refusing to be a second column. Why? Why, why, why? I cannot see what the problem is. But then, it's like trying to catch a grammatical error when you don't even know the vocabulary. Wah. Why won't you be fixed easily, dear columns of blog? Why do you mock me so?

EDIT 2:45 AM: Ah! They are columns once more! ... I have no idea what I did.

Yet the first column stubborrnly persists in terminating prematurely at the close of the second column. Why? Why does it behave in such an obstinant manner?

And what the hell happened to my ability to spell words in English?

Frikkin' frakkin' Enetation

My commenting has disappeared. I don't know why.

I'm starting up Blogger commenting, so you guys can respond to the previous post. Um, so, please respond to the previous post.

Unless Blogger commenting doesn't work. In that case, e-mail me.


EDIT 7:29 PM: It's not working. I don't know why. I suck at this. But then, Blogger and Enetation suck at customer service. Then again, I don't pay for either.

EDIT 8:05PM: Okay, so it's working now. It's ugly, though. Bleh-phooie. But it's working. So, uh, please respond to that previous post. Doumo!

Advice?

My graduation present from my parents/big sister E-- is to be an Apple laptop. They told me to decide which one. I really don't know, though, which I should get, or what I should get with it. Any of you have any advice (other than get a PC as I don't want a PC)?

Kingdom of Heaven

I honestly wonder what movie the critics I've read saw. Did they actually bother to watch the film, or were they text-messaging someone and occasionally taking notes based on whatever caught their eye? Were they there with a large collection of annoying Orlando Bloom fans ranging in age from 12 to 22 and screaming their heads off at inappropriate intervals, declaring for all the theater to hear that they were willing to give up their bodies for this young man they don't know at all, squealing in jealousy every time Nathalie Cox or Liam Neeson or David Thewlis touched the boy?

This was not the film the reviewers of The New York Times or The New Yorker described. It is flawed, yes. It feels as though it were severely edited down from a much longer film in which relationships and politics were given time to develop. Yet there is still enough for a semi-intelligent viewer to catch on that there is more to the film than what the reviewers got.

The reviewers I read claimed the film ignored religion, or had a character at its center who was fighting in a holy war though he didn't have the impetus of faith. That was clearly untrue. Yes, Bloom's Balian is struggling with his faith after losing his child and then his losing his wife to suicide. The townspeople are absent, the cleric cruel, wallowing in Balian's misery. He goes to the Middle East to find redemption for his wife and for himself. Yet he is not without faith entirely. He feels God has abandoned him, yet he does not act as if he has abandoned God, but by the high ideals his faith and his father set for him.

This is not a historically accurate film. It's not meant to be. It's more of an essay on the nature of faith versus religion. What makes a good man. When is it all right to compromise, and when is it not. What is more important, stones or men. What is truly God’s will, and how does one know. What makes a good leader.

Yes, the turn by which a blacksmith becomes the knight is contrived, but I wasn't expecting much more. This is a Ridley Scott film, after all. His films are often filled with certain plot twists which, when looked at in the bright light of the lobby, don't pan out as neatly as you'd like them to, but allow the plot to move forward.

There are bad men and men who are better and men who compromise. Everyone is tainted by the wrongs done over that patch of land. There are certain anachronistic speeches and actions, but they are made to further the point. It's a much more thoughtful film than The Gladiator, and a more effective one, perhaps because of the center of the film being set on a more universal and positive aspect of humanity than simple vengeance.

There are characters who lack full explanation to the point of caricature, yet the performers do well within them, fleshing out what could have been human place markers. There seemed to be no ill-cast actor. And, this being a Ridley Scott film, the cinematography, especially of the battle scenes, is excellent. This is most definitely a post-Lord of the Rings film, but still carries Scott's distinct flourishes. Best period battles I've seen in a long, long time.

This isn't the most eloquent defense of a film, nor have I made the points I wanted to make. I've never been a very good reviewer (I wish I could be as good at this as ET or Erin). Still, at least I bothered to watch the movie before I wrote about it.

No, not really. That can't be.

And yet, it is. The closer for the Seattle Mariners tonight was named J.J. Putz. He gave up a ninth-inning homer to Jorge Posada, just to put the shit icing on the Mariners' humiliation cake.

Putz. His name is Putz. It's sewn across the back of his jersey, displayed for all to see every game in which he pitches. That's just so very unfortunate.

SPAM of the Day

From: barristerdarris5@eresmas.com
Date: Wed, 11 May 2005 11:39:42 GMT
Subject: KINDLY ASSIST.



FROM: Barrister Omoego Darris.
TEL: 234-803-581-4937.


I am Barrister Omoego Darris an International Legal Practitioner and a Consultant to Mr. Shouwkat Kahlil, a Lebanese Importer of Textiles and Automobiles, based in Cotonou,Republic of Benin for the past twenty years. Unfortunately, my client Mr Shouwkat Kahlil was one of the passengers that died in the ill-fated plane crash involving a Boeing 727 UTA chartered flight that took off from Cotonou, Republic of Benin and crashed into the Atlantic ocean on Thursday, 25 December 2003. For details of the plane crash,please visit :
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/africa/12/26/benin.crash/index.html
Before the untimely death of my client, he had through a security company here in Cotonuo moved the sum of US$20.5m to Europe and was to proceed to Netherlands immediately after the Holiday to complete arrangements and have this money Deposited into ABN AMRO BANK and already the security company where the funds was deposited has sent notice to me requesting that this funds should be claimed by the depositor (My Client) or his next of kin within 14 working days, else the fund will be forfeited to the state. I must confess to you that if I do not find a way to bring this fund out of the Finance Company, I will be doing the greatest injustice to my late friend and his family. this is why I decided to you to stand in as a next of kin or his business partner who was supposed to receive the funds for investment in Europe. There are no risks involved as I am the only person who has access to my client's documents. The Finance firm has just sent a reminder to my client through me, informing him of the maturity of his fund. Your compensation for your assistance in securing the fund is subject to negotiations. I need the following information from you. Your full names,address,telephone and Fax numbers. Also Copy of your Identification. Reply urgently, as we must conclude this transaction within the next 14 working days

Sincerely,
Barrister Omoego Darris.



-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Deja de trabajar para beneficiar a tu jefe. TRABAJA PARA TI Y DESDE CASA.

What the loser wears

I've decided, upon seeing it for about two seconds on Funimation's website, that I simply must have this tee-shirt. Because I'm a pathetic loser for Furuba and the angry, angry orange cat.

The page you are looking for is currently unavailable.

Cannot find server?! The fuck? Gmail's servers aren't allowed to be down, dammit. They must always run and be happy and give me my e-mail. I WANT MY E-MAIL, DAMN YOU, GMAIL! Grah!


P.S. Anyone want a Gmail account?

*twitch* *twitch*

from Fafblog!:

Florida has no parental notifaction laws. But it does have a Department of Children and Families, and thank God for that: it has successfully sued to prevent a pregnant 13-year-old ward of the state from having an abortion on the grounds that she's too immature to make the decision. Too immature to choose to have a child, but plenty old enough to risk physically bringing it to term, and to raise it in the squalor of state custody. Ah, the glorious mysteries of the culture of life!
? posted by Medium Lobster

FW: Ten First-Place Winners in the International Pun Contest

This is a forwarded e-mail from my dad. My family frequently speaks in puns. Sometimes we have entire dinner conversations in puns. They are rarely intentional, but unavoidable. Frequent pun-induced groaning at Thanksgiving. We're just wired oddly. The only two jokes I know are long story jokes which end in horrific puns. If you don't like puns, you should never accept a dinner invitation by my family.

Anyway, I now share the punning pain with you, Dear Reader.

1. A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess looks at him and says, "I'm sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger."

2. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. The one turns to the other and says "Dam!"

3. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire on the craft. Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it too.

4. Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says "I've lost my electron." The other says "Are you sure?" The first replies "I'm positive."

5. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal? His goal: transcend dental medication.

6. A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse. "But why?", they asked, as they moved off. "Because," he said, "I can't stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer."

7. A woman has twins and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to a family in Egypt and is named "Ahmal." The other goes to a family in Spain; they name him "Juan." Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal. Her husband responds, "They're twins! If you've seen Juan, you've seen Ahmal."

8. These friars were behind on their belfry payments, so they opened up a small florist shop to raise funds. Since everyone liked to buy flowers from the men of God, a rival florist across town thought the competition was unfair. He asked the good fathers to close down, but they would not. He went back and begged the friars to close. They ignored him. So the rival florist hired Hugh MacTaggart, the roughest and most vicious thug in town to "persuade" them to close. Hugh beat up the friars and trashed their store, saying he'd be back if they didn't close up shop. Terrified, they did so --- thereby proving that only Hugh can prevent florist friars.

9. Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him a super-calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

10. And finally, there was the scurvy knave who sent ten different puns to friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.

Update on AOL Bush performance polls

Total number of votes on the poll from yesterday (modified to include response to Bush's press conference) is up to nearly a quarter of a million. What's interesting is the change in percentages from the results last night.

How satisfied are you with what Bush said during his press conference?
Not at all 64%
Very 28%
Somewhat 8%

How would you rate Bush's overall job performance?
Poor 58%
Excellent 21%
Good 11%
Fair 9%

Total Votes: 244,783

The negative numbers are only slightly less than they were before (58% Poor down from 59%, 9% Fair down from 10%). The difference between Good and Excellent has spread, from 13/18 to 11/21, but they're still significantly smaller percentages than the negative (Good and Excellent combined still don't equal Poor, let alone Fair/Poor combined).

The numbers on policy-specific polls also remain relatively similar at nearly 150 thousand votes each poll, with the negative responses dropping by only one percentage point on Social Security "reform," Iraq, and the economy, and by four points on the energy plan.

So it doesn't matter if it's slightly under 60 thousand (or about 40 thousand on the policy polls) or nearly a quarter of a million votes (or about 150 thousand on policy polls). The usually conservative AOL poll respondants appear to be greatly displeased with Bush. And that's a very big change from just a few months ago.

All I can say is, you voted for him, folks. This crap is not my fault.

I should be writing that paper, but it's either blog or reread From Far Away vol. 1-3

Barbie as Batgirl with Motorcycle

This is the first time I've ever wanted a Barbie doll.

I'm so pathetic.

Relevant

And in this webcomic, White Ninja meets the King of the Octopuses.

w00t!

Apple - Trailers - Serenity - Large

The full screen won't work 'cause I can't download the software required.... Won't work with our version of Windows. Bleh.

Hey...was that Charlie Eppes?

Yeah! It is! It's Charlie Eppes, a thousand years in the future!

Holy crap!

Polls on AOL tend to lean towards the conservative in their results. (AOL is apparently the antithesis of LiveJournal, where many liberals lurk and share stories of meeting their favorite singers/actors/comedians in the most atrocious English/typing possible.) This is why I found the following results surprising:

How would you rate Bush's overall job performance?
Poor 59%
Excellent 18%
Good 13%
Fair 10%
Total Votes: 58,258

(No, I don't know how to make tables in HTML/this pansy-ass version of HTML Blogger has us using. I'm a coding idiot.)

A full 69% of the respondants rate the President's job performance fair to poor. Geh.

... Naturally, I just noticed the number. Am being juvinilish, which is o so stylish.

Crap. Tried not writing that, but I couldn't stop myself. Fudge.

Anyway, only 31% rate the guy positively. The vast majority of respondants replied to the question with a "he sucks!" This surprises me. We all know what I think of him and his administration. I just wasn't expecting that many other people to respond the same way.

Then there were these more policy-specific polls.

Do you understand Bush's Social Security plan?
Yes 68%
No 32%
Do you support it?
No 75%
Yes 25%
Total Votes: 40,358


Do you understand Bush's energy plan?
Yes 60%
No 40%
Do you support it?
No 74%
Yes 26%
Total Votes: 39,825


Do you approve of Bush's handling of Iraq?
No 71%
Yes 29%
Do you approve of Bush's handling of the economy?
No 75%
Yes 25%
Total Votes: 41,170

Again, heavily against Bush's performance, averaging out to just under 75% on overall support ratings.

What's rather stupid is the difference between the approval ratings and the percent who understand the policies. Don't you have to have an understanding of the policy in order to have an opinion on it? What the hell is going on with the jump, of fourteen points in one case, from number who understand to number who disapprove? How can you say you disagree if you don't know what the hell the conversation is about? I can understand if you find a particular plan or policy confusing, but if you really don't understand it, you shouldn't be responding that you don't like it.

This coming from a person who sides against almost everything this particular President has done. (The "almost" from my not being entirely sure there wasn't an instance, here or there, where I might have found myself agreeing with him.)

Not that these polls mean jack shit, as it's completely unscientific, and I could easily go to seven different terminals, select "Poor" for that first poll, and have an affect on the results. Still, the results of AOL polls like these were much different a few months ago.

From my dad - Fwd: A message from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton

Thank you for writing to me about one of the most important issues currently facing our nation, and that is the effort by some members of the United States Senate to violate rules of this august body in order to end filibusters against judicial nominations, an effort that has become known as the "nuclear option." This term appropriately describes what some of my colleagues are attempting to do because if they were to be successful in this effort, it would mark the first time in the history of the United States that the Senate changed its internal rules of governance without following its own rules and procedures for amending those internal rules of governance. In short, some senators are not just trying to change the rules but are seeking to violate an important rule that they do not like in order to prevent a substantial minority of Senators from being able to participate in any meaningful way in the consideration of federal judicial nominations. Through an exercise of sheer power, they are attempting to place themselves above the rules to which all Senators agreed to abide.

If invoked, the "nuclear option" would be, in my view, one of the most egregious abuses of powers that the Senate has experienced in its history. The rules are somewhat technical in terms of how they work but the bottom line is that the purpose of the filibuster and related rules is to ensure that no one political party has unfettered power over the other and over the millions of Americans that the substantial minority of Senators represent. Congress after Congress, decade after decade, Senators have agreed unanimously that to get rid of the filibuster would require a super-majority, not a simple majority, and that makes sense. Important Senate rules governing minority rights should not be able to be easily changed but should instead be changed only when there is very strong support, a super-majority, to do so. By resorting to the "nuclear option", violating these rules by requiring only a simple majority rather than super majority to get rid of the filibuster in judicial nominations, the majority seeks to turn the United States Senate into a rubber stamp for President Bush's extreme judicial nominees and force all Senators to abdicate our constitutional responsibility of advice and consent. As one sworn to uphold the Constitution, that is something that I cannot and will not do, and that is why I will continue to do all I can to fight for our democratic traditions. The Constitution, which is the foundation of our democracy, very clearly sets up what we call a balance of power. That is an important concept, which is critical to how successful we have been as a nation, even during the most turbulent of times.

Unfortunately, some members of the Senate majority want to undermine, rather than preserve, that balance. Because of the extreme positions taken by some of President Bush's judicial nominees, the majority is, understandably, unable to muster enough votes on these nominations. Instead of negotiating and looking to find common ground, they have simply decided to violate the rules to reach their desired outcome. Kids on playgrounds across America have a word for this kind of behavior: it is called "cheating," and it is wrong. No one should support this kind of arrogance of power, especially in a democracy.

Let me also underscore that as of today, the United States Senate has confirmed 205 of President Bush's judicial nominations, 100 of whom were confirmed during the relatively brief period of time that my party colleagues held the Senate majority. Indeed, at the end of the 108th Congress, we had the lowest vacancy rate on the federal courts in 14 years. Only 10 Bush nominees have been rejected, each because he or she failed to demonstrate a sufficient commitment to protecting the rights and freedoms of all Americans. Therefore, in contrast to claims made by some, the Senate minority members have not been "obstructionist." To the contrary, we have a strong record of confirming almost all of President Bush's judicial nominees. Indeed, just two weeks ago, I spoke on the Senate floor in strong support of the nomination of Paul Crotty, who was nominated to serve as a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. This nomination was confirmed unanimously, not because every Senator believed that he or she would agree with all of Judge Crotty's rulings, but, I believe, because we each had faith that he would do his best to abide by the rule of law and uphold our Constitution.

Unfortunately, President Bush has nominated a few people to serve on our federal courts for life that I and many of my colleagues believe would not abide by the rule of law, which is why some of these nominees were not confirmed. Now, to stack the courts with these nominees and other extreme judges, the majority is attempting to violate long-established and agreed to Senate rules in order to do away with a constitutional check on the power of the President to pick any judicial nominees he pleases. This is wrong and inconsistent with American values. Rest assured that I will do all that I can to ensure that this does not happen.

Not enough of a cat

My sister forwarded this e-mail to me. My brother "confirmed" it at Urban Legends Reference Pages: Photo Gallery (Toner Mouse). It's supposed to be funny, but all I can think is, Oh my God, oh my God, that poor mouse, it's dead, oh that poor mouse. I'm a big softie. Obviously, I've not enough cat-ness to me to find this "LOL .. hilarious!" Perhaps you sick bastards do and will.

Seeking justice in Spain

Spain to try 9/11 terror suspects

Twenty-four people suspected of being part of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US will go on trial in the Spanish capital, Madrid, on Friday.

Prosecutors want three of the men to receive a total of more than 60,000 years in jail - 25 for each victim.

Damn fuckin' straight. God bless the Spanish.