Random Thinking

The American Family Association (AFA), runs a Christian news service and like many web-based news services, they pull at least some of their news stories from AP. But they have a strict policy of not using the word “gay” but instead replace it with “homosexual” in all stories they pull from AP. This is silly enough, but when the story that they ran through their filters is about an Olympic athlete named Tyson Gay, hilarity ensues.

Tyson Homosexual was a blur in blue, sprinting 100 meters faster than anyone ever has. “It means a lot to me,” the 25-year-old Homosexual said. “I’m glad my body could do it, because now I know I have it in me.”

And the article also discussed another athlete who also qualified for the Olympics named (and I’m not making this up) Walter Dix. So we get this great sentence from the AFA version of the article:

After the race, Homosexual and Dix looked at each other and slapped palms, then hugged.

Try getting that image out of your mind.

Anyway, the AFA has fixed the page but Google has cached it for the enjoyment of future generations.

The Bravery is an American rock band from New York City. Sam Endicott is the lead singer and songwriter for the group. Their music is a synthesis of indie rock and electronica. They have had two singles in the Billboard Hot Modern Rock charts.

Honest Mistake, released in 2005, was their first single. The song is apparently about a chance homosexual encounter with a friend.

Honest Mistake

People
They don’t mean a thing to you
They move right through you
Just like your breath
But sometimes
I still think of you
And I just wanted to
Just wanted you to know
My old friend…
I swear I never meant for this
I never meant…

Don’t look at me that way
It was an honest mistake
Don’t look at me that way
It was an honest mistake
An honest mistake

Sometimes
I forget I’m still awake
I fuck up and say these things out loud
My old friend…
I swear I never meant for this
I never meant…

Don’t look at me that way
It was an honest mistake
Don’t look at me that way
It was an honest mistake
An honest mistake

written by Sam Endicott

The video shows the band playing the song in a bare, dark room while a Rube Goldberg type contraption runs itself around them.

Oh, that crazy city by the bay. Or as Howard Epstein, chair of the San Francisco Republican Party said, “It’s typical San Francisco crazies.” So what are those nutty citizens of San Francisco doing?

They plan to put a proposition on the ballot in November to honor George W. Bush as he leaves office. But this is San Francisco we are discussing… the city that passed (with 58% of the vote) a proposition to impeach Bush and Cheney. So you don’t think they would name an office building or a library after GWB, do you? No, they are proposing to rename a sewage treatment plant after him. The Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco has been collecting signatures to get their proposal on the ballot and they have passed the number of signatures they need by more than 1,500.

“This is the way the democratic process is supposed to work, even though it’s a silly idea in some people’s eyes,” organizer Brian McConnell was quoted as saying. “Fifty years from now in a civics class, students will learn about the Lincoln Memorial, that other presidents are on Mount Rushmore - and George W. Bush got a sewage plant.” The biggest opposition McConnell foresees is that people in the Democratic stronghold might oppose naming anything after, what many historians consider, the worst president in history.

Meanwhile, the officials at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission note that the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant is an award-winning facility that keeps the ocean clean. “If you are looking for a place to make a negative statement about the Bush administration’s impact on the environment, this would be the last place to do it,” agency spokesman Tony Winnicker said.

The question is, what was it?

Anyway, Michel has not been in good shape. She got dizzy and fell last week and was having trouble walking which is why she was using the walker at the cemetery. Her lower back was all scraped and it looks like it has become infected. Maybe I’ll add a picture later. She was talking to a friend who is a doctor and he said that it sounds to him like all the passing out she has been doing lately may actually be seizures. She did see the SSI doctor last week so that is moving along. It’s only been a year since she fell down the stairs and hasn’t been able to work.

My mother has been moved to the rehab hospital where she should be spending the next month. So far so good. Beth has finished taking all her Regents exams except for French which is on Tuesday. She thinks she did OK in chemistry, although she said it was very hard. Social Studies was apparently very easy, in fact, it was easier than her regular tests. I found out that her Social Studies teacher is very cool, she even has a Che Guevara t-shirt which makes her my hero.

AFI (short for A Fire Inside) is an alternative rock band from California. Besides their music, the band is also noted for being vegan and following the hardcore punk lifestyle known as “straight edge” which involves abstaining from alcohol, smoking, and recreational drug use. Their most recent album, Decemberunderground, was enormously successful reaching #1 on the Billboard Charts and two songs from the album have reached #1 on the Billboard Modern Rock chart. This song is the last single released from an earlier album, Sing the Sorrow (2003) which reached #5 on the Billboard charts.

Silver and Cold

I, I came here by day,
but I left here in darkness
and found you, found you on the way.

Now, it is silver and silent.
It is silver and cold.
You in somber resplendence,
I hold…

Your sins into me,
oh, my beautiful one.
Your sins into me.
As a rapturous voice escapes
I will tremble a prayer
and I’ll beg for forgiveness.
Your sins into me,
Your sins into me
oh, my beautiful one.

Light, like the flutter of wings,
feel your hollow voice rushing
into me as you’re longing to sing.
So I,I will paint you in silver.
I will wrap you in cold.
I will lift up your voice as I sink.

Your sins into me,
oh, my beautiful one, now
Your sins into me.
As a rapturous voice escapes
I will tremble a prayer
and I’ll beg for forgiveness.
Your sins into me,
Your sins into me

Cold in life’s throes.
I’ll fall asleep for you.
Cold in life’s throes.
I only ask you turn away.
Cold in life’s throes.
I’ll fall asleep for you.
Cold in life’s throes
I only ask you turn
as they seep into me,
oh, my beautiful one, now…

Your sins into me,
oh, my beautiful one, now
Your sins into me.
As a rapturous voice escapes
I will tremble a prayer
and I’ll beg for forgiveness.
Your sins into me,
Your sins into…
Your sins into me
Oh my beautiful one!

written by Davey Havok

The video for this song was filmed in Prague.

This is the best version of the video on YouTube. Embedding has been disabled so click here to enjoy.

You do know what Bloomsday is, right?

Last time I won was in April of 2007 but with a time of only 47 seconds on Saturday, I crushed my competition and drove them into wailing and gnashing their teeth in dismay. Stand before the master and bow down in disgrace! Tee-hee.

This was the first Father’s Day without Michel’s dad. We went out to Calverton to visit and to see his stone.

Michel was very sad but she spent some time talking to her pop

This was a picture we took for a friend from Victoria.

Mikey enjoyed running through the fields.

This section of the cemetery is new so there are graves being opened.

It is a beautiful, well-kept cemetery. Eventually this field - and the one Mikey was running through - will be full of the graves of men and women (and their spouses) who fought for our country.

The NY Daily News featured an article (”Gitmo Thugs Get U.S. Rights”) and editorial in today’s paper, condemning the decision by the Supreme Court to give prisoners held in Guantanamo the right to ask American courts to decide whether the government had sufficient eveidence to keep them imprisoned indefinitely. Although military courts had heard their cases, those military courts allowed evidence gained under torture, hearsay, and secret evidence, hardly what America respresents.

This is a letter I wrote to the NY Daily News today:

Your headline in the paper on June 13th (”Gitmo Thugs Get U.S. Rights”) shows a profound failure to understand what America is all about. The “Gitmo thugs” did not get U.S. rights. The Supreme Court acknowledged that the prisoners in Gitmo have the same inalienable rights that all people have. When Thomas Jefferson wrote and our founding fathers ratified the Declaration of Independence, they were not claiming special rights because they were living in the 13 colonies. They were claiming that as human beings they had certain rights that could not be removed from them by any act of Parliament. When we have reached the point that we think we can put anyone in prison and hold them there as long as we want with no recourse for them, then we have stopped being the nation that was founded in 1776.

The Friday song from my iPod:

Green Day has been around for more than 20 years, having formed in 1987. This song came from their Nimrod album which was released to critical acclaim in 1997. The album was different than the standard pop-punk music from their earlier albums and featured experiments in various music types including acoustic. Armstrong had this to say about the song in an interview in 2005:

“At the time I wrote Good Riddance, I was breaking up with a girl that was moving to Ecuador, and I was trying to be as understanding about it as I could. I wrote the song as kind of a bon voyage. I was trying not to be bitter, but I think it came out a little bit bitter anyway… I thought that calling the song “Time of Your Life” was just a little too level-headed for me, so I had to come up with something different”

“Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)”

Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road
Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go
So make the best of this test, and don’t ask why
It’s not a question, but a lesson learned in time

It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right.
I hope you had the time of your life.

So take the photographs, and still frames in your mind
Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time
Tattoos of memories and dead skin on trial
For what it’s worth it was worth all the while

It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right.
I hope you had the time of your life.

Written by Billie Joe Armstrong

The video for this song won the MTV Video Award for Best Alternative Video.