The Blog with No Name

Blogging is going to be light again today. I have to finish moving out of my old apartment, get things set up at my new place, switch my address, cash some checks, and go see Spiderman 2 later tonight. Spiderman 2 has been getting thoroughly excellent reviews. At rottentomatoes.com it currently has a 96 rating. This is pretty much unheard of.

My friend Greg Piper is moving out of Seattle. I guess no business is smart enough to hire him. He’ll be moving to his parent’s place in Salem (where I’m going for law school). Greg remarks, “Salem . . . is better known as a place to die, rather than live as a youth.” Fantastic. Thanks, Greg . . .

“Many of you are well enough off that … the tax cuts may have helped you. We’re saying that for America to get back on track, we’re probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.” - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, June 28, 2004 at a Democratic fund-raiser in San Francisco.

Firefox is now at 0.9.1. Probably not a necessary download, but the lure of the bleeding edge is irresistable.

I’m a little annoyed that I’m in the process of moving these next couple of days because there is so much I want to post about but don’t have the time.

I’m moving out of my circa-1910 apartment building and heading back to the dorms! It will be like freshman year all over again . . .minus the fun, friends, and females. I’ll be living in a dorm at SPU for the month of July. I got cut a deal there, and it’s probably the only place I can really stay comfortably for just one month.

So I’ve been packing and watching movies. Speaking of which, Best Buy has some outrageous deals on DVDs these days. I got a bunch of really good movies for only $10 a piece! That means I only have to watch them three times before I’ve gotten my money’s worth. Cha-ching!

Here is why today was a superb day:

1. Apple previewed the next version of OS X today. Codenamed Tiger, and it’s going to kick your butt. I’ll blog more about this later.
2. Apple announced new LCD displays today. The new 30″ is obscene. It takes two DVI cables to power the thing! Is it possible to lust after an inanimate object? I think so!
3. The UN is in Iran inspecting its nuclear facilities. Do you wonder if Iran took into account the fate of its next door neighbor?
4. The US and Libya have renewed diplomatic ties. Do you wonder if Libya took into account the fate of another dictator when it abandoned it’s WMD programs? I still wouldn’t trust Qaddafi to mail a letter for me, but it’s a step in the right direction.
5. That scumbag Zarqawi may have been captured.
6. There’s a trillion barrels of oil in Alberta, Canada. US led invasion in 5, 4, 3, . .
7. It was Kyle’s birthday today!!! Happy birthday, Kyle!
8. It was also a very beautiful day here in Seattle.

Now, another test begins. The eyes of the world are watching.

. . . the wedding bells that is. Yes, another one of my friends got married today. This time it was my good buddy Soini. The ceremony was nicely done and short. Then again, the ceremony always seems short to me. The reception was nice too. I got to see lots of friends and have a good time as you can see below:

I have two thoughts about weddings. It occurred to me today that it’s a good thing to be one of the last to be married in one’s circle of friends. Why? Because by the time you get married, everybody else has settled down and gotten a job. This means they have more money. Ergo, they can buy you better wedding gifts. Think about it. If you get married when all your friends are poor college students . . . well you might as well forget the registries. Good luck even getting a card. My second thought is about the brevity of the ceremony. Look, this is the last chance I have to back out of a life-long commitment. Personally, I think I’d want that chance to be as long as possible so that I can be really really really sure I want to go through with it. If you have a short ceremony, your window of opportunity to cut loose is short as well. After all, even careful thinkers and lovers make mistakes. Therefore, a prudent, humble man will allow himself the maximum amount of time to change his mind.

Today I smelled a smell that should never be smelled by those who smell.

I want to make a few quick points about this little ditty.

1. I think it’s great the NYT has the headline “Group Says Ads for 9/11 Film Violate Law”, and then talks about a rating kerfluffle for half the article, saving the real meat of the headlined issue for the END of the article. Superb, NYT, superb.

2. Of course Moore is given space to get his quote in, but nobody from the “conservative advocacy group” is given space. Reporting at its finest!

3. A future colleague of mine is quoted. Unfortunately she says something stupid.

4. Maybe issues like this will underscore how lame the unconstitutional CFR laws are and they will get repealed. Please?

After you finish reading this, RUN to the closest theater, and watch this movie. Why? Because this movie pulls off the trifecta of all movies of all time. No other movie will have David Hasselhoff, William Shatner, and Chuck Norris together on the same screen. Yes, you read that right: David Hasselhoff and William Shatner and Chuck Norris. After assembling this powerhouse of acting talent FOX knew it didn’t need a script, a good plot, and clever comedy. And they definitely didn’t need lesser talents cluttering up the scenes (unless it’s Christine Taylor).

Pros: David Hasselhoff, William Shatner, Chuck Norris, it’s short, Ben Stiller gets the beat down, Lance Armstrong who should give up that silly bicycling thing for acting.
Cons: Predictable, crass, not very funny, Christine Taylor is married to Ben Stiller

Obviously a very important birth is missing from this list.

I had heard about the BBC interview in which Clinton throw a hissy fit after being asked about the Lewinsky affair. I was waiting for it to turn up on the internet, and now it has! Watch all 48 minutes here.

The first thing I’d like to say is that I like this show’s camera angles and lighting choices. I thought it was rather refreshing from the straight-on, studio-lit interviews on American TV. This seems more like an friendly, informal conversation.

The first thing Clinton says that catches my attention is when he states politics works best when the parties are fighting about “who is right and who is wrong rather than who’s good and who’s bad.” It’s nice to see a politician, or anybody for that matter, admit that the battle is indeed between rightness and wrongness. It’s frustrating to hear so many people try to dilute things things into a blob of grayness. For the record, I do believe everything is ultimately black and white, but when seen through the foggy lenses of human understanding the dividing line is sometimes hard to discern.

It’s kinda freaky when you hear somebody who was President of the United States, easily the most powerful man on the face of the planet, controller of nuclear weapons, Commander-in-Chief of the greatest military in history, a chief guardian of democracy, and top executor of the law, admit that he lived “parallel lives.”

Clinton shows the first signs of frustration around 16:30 in. He accuses the Press of giving Ken Starr a free-ride, and that’s how he was able to ensnare Clinton into committing perjury (he denies the perjury part, which is understandable). Best quote:

That’s why people like you [the interviewer] always help the far-right ’cause you like to hurt people, and you like to talk about how bad people are and all their personal failings.

Around 18 minutes Clinton is really going off, and then the interviewer feels compelled to defend how he is conducting the interview.

Clinton’s take on the run-up to the Iraq War wasn’t too bad. He supported Bush when Bush demanded new inspections. He supported Bush’s request to use force if the inspections failed. And he says he would have supported a war, regardless of UN support, if the inspections failed. Once again, I find Clinton’s view on foreign policy and defense to be much more palatable than Kerry’s. Clinton also believes we’re “basically moving in the right direction now.” I agree. However, he believes Bush jumped the gun going into Iraq because the inspections hadn’t finished (even though they had per UN resolution 1441). Of course I disagree with this. Saddam was found to be in material breach of UN resolutions, foisted heaps of worthless documents onto the UN inspectors, dragged his feet to “co-operate,” and, in short, acted guilty as hell. When you got the hammer of the US military hovering over you, do you really want to dick around if you can totally avoid it? The inspectors and Saddam had what should have been ample time to conclusively prove there were no WMDs.

I appreciate Clinton’s take on the Israel/Palestine conflict. I like his optimism. I think he makes a great point that because the US is firmly and (so far) unwaveringly committed to the survival of the state of Israel, the US is probably the only third party that Israel will trust and thus allow a peace to be fashioned.

39 minutes in Clinton is asked about Rwanda: “It’s one of my greatest regrets.” He claims there’s no way he could have known “seven hundred, eight hundred thousand people could be killed with machetes in 90 days.”

Interesting exchange about Kerry:

Interviewer: Will Kerry restore Clinton’s domestic policies or will we have to wait for Hillary [paraphase]?
Clinton: I support John Kerry . . . he’s a good man and I believe he will be quite a good president.
I: Quite?
C: Very, very good president. “Quite a good president,” you don’t say that? I think he’d be an excellent president.

I have two reasons why I don’t think Clinton really believes in Kerry: he said “quite” the first time, betraying his gut response, and when he said “he’d make an excellent president” he was looking at the ground . . . like he didn’t really mean it.

All in all, pretty interesting. Use my time markers to maximize the excitement/time ratio.

After seeing this, I kinda had an epiphany. Earlier this year the vast right wing conspiracy/ evangelical fundamentalists had their movie: The Passion. It’s only fair that the knee-jerk liberal crowd gets theirs: Fahrenheit 9/11.

I’ll let the reader compare the substance and merits of the movies.

UPDATE: I’m kinda pissed. WorldMagBlog ripped off my epiphany and didn’t even credit me. I guess that’s okay. I’m not too impressed with their blog anyway.

Andrew Sullivan points to a WaPo article that shows a direct conflict between Clinton’s testimony while under oath and his book. Pretty interesting . . .