Two Old Topics

…because they’re worthwhile, and I need something to check out a new image rotating Javascript I used on the header. Hit refresh a few times, check it out.

First, A Brief History of Dance Festivals.

Absolutely FABULOUS read courtesy of the blogga.

Second, courtesy of Facebook:

Top ten reasons to make gay marriage illegal

01) Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.

02) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.

03) Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

04) Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn’t changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can’t marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.

05) Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of Britney Spears’ 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.

06) Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn’t be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren’t full yet, and the world needs more children.

07) Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.

08) Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That’s why we have only one religion in America.

09) Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That’s why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.

10) Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven’t adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.

And I’m done. See you tomorrow.

Summer Daze

Yeah, it’s a cliche title that’s been used in umpteen comic strips (including The Family Circus… and you know when The Family Circus uses something it’s WAY past its prime) and even by my old Latin teacher, but it’s really where I’m at right now. I’m thinking about doing a million things, but acting on none of them, which is quite unhealthy and obviously unproductive. I’m listening to uptempo downtempo, if that makes sense (it’s off the Hifi House Sessions for those who care). I’m thinking about building a rocket for LDRS 26 which is going to be hosted by ROC. I’m thinking about learning how to podcast. I’m thinking about finishing up my ballistics analysis software for the Mac, but that would also mean that I’m thinking about finishing learning the Apple programming language Cocoa.

Maybe it’s the job… working for Apple is incredibly rewarding and makes me really happy. It also happens to be quite draining, I think. I came home from work tonight, pulled my car into the garage (WOO HOO, two cars in the garage), installed the all thread into the nose cone of my competitor (dual deploy here I come), ate a bunch of random stuff out of the refrigerator, then kind of sat down at the computer and did nothing. Maybe I should go to bed or something productive, in order to accomplish more productive stuff soon in the future.

Maybe?

See what I mean?

Miraculous.

According to Blogger, I haven’t updated this thing since 18 June. A lot has happened since then. Kind of.

Since it’s summer, my life has slowed considerably. Sure, there’s the bonfires, the hanging out, the 10:30PM Rubio’s runs with fingernail clipppings, but it’s not exactly a college campus of activity here right now. My day usually begins late in the morning, when I get up, get cereal, read the Opinion section, think about maybe working on a rocket, then go to work and come home. It passes the time, but not much goes on that’s out of the norm, or at least that seems blog-worthy.

I had some big deep important thought a while ago, but I completely lost it. Oh well, maybe it’ll come back again. That’s like the fifth time it’s happened to me on this blog.

Culturally, I’m staying aware by sticking on the KCRW volunteer list. I went to a Kinky/Sidestepper concert and volunteered for the station by handing out stickers, refrigerator magnets, flyers (which I scammed from the concert people after we ran out of stickers), and balloons (which we scammed from our booth and the two boths next to us after we ran out of flyers). I got to meet a bunch of cool people, including Meijin (really awesome girl from Yale) and KCRW’s volunteer director Connie Alvarez. Oh, and I got to see Kinky who are, hands down, one of the best performance groups out there.

It’s blurry ’cause I was dancing to the music with 2,000 other drunk Kinky fans. Their combination of dance beats with Latin grooves makes for very dance-able music. Add on to that lighting, a pond, and the excellent venue of California Plaza, and you’ve got one hell of a performance. It was almost as awesome as lead singer Gilberto Cerezo’s boots were.

Sidestepper was good too. But I give mad props to Kinky. While everyone danced and clapped for the opener, the headliners had people jumping into the fountain by the end of the night. Mmm hmm. It was awesome.

In other news, my odometer on my new car rolled over 1000 miles a few days ago. Time and highways fly when you’re having fun and blasting music loud enough to bother the people next to you on the road.

Awkwardly enough after work today, I went over to Lisa’s house for a little barbecue pool party type thing. Well, at least that’s what it was supposed to be. I pulled up around 7:20 at the house, having tried to call my parents at least sixty billion times before arriving. I learned upon entering the house that my parents (along with most of everybody else) had already left. But Lisa was still there, chillin by the jacuzzi with a few people, including one gamer whom she met at Junior Sailors (I think) (where she works) and who could only talk about Battlefield 2 and Counterstrike, and a certain Paul, which made for a lovely awkward time, considering how I had just finished describing to Stephanie Adler a few days ago how I had gouged all memories of him from my mind with a rusty spoon. (No, you may not touch it with your salad fingers.) The gamer (I’m totally blanking on his name and feel kind of bad) reminded me a lot of a geeky Cosmo from The Fairly Oddparents, or something. He proceeded to insult Apple computers for about five minutes as I sat there and quietly nodded my head wearing an Apple t-shirt (I had just come from work, after all). I finally concluded with the remark, “I use my computer for stuff that happens in this world,” and left it at that. He didn’t say anything else.

So hopefully one of these days I’ll get to chill with Lisa without being under the pretense of a political campaign or awkward social situations. Maybe we can go sailing, or if I ever figure out how to land a damn Piper Cub, go flying one of these days. It’d be fun.

I’m also contemplating giving in to social pressure and setting up a Myspace. Seriously.

It’d probably go well with the new comment/trackback system I installed a few weeks ago. Try it out.

That’s about it for now. Record update, I think. Of some kind.