Further Visual description of the pain in my head.


And then some days are like this. This is a website some folks look for and find my site because I discuss Megan's Law. The California site is here and it provides the ability to look for sexual predators under zip code, street address and any manner of way. So if you live in California and are looking to know if that creepy guy who lives down the street could be something to worry about you can check him out here. Of course, if he hasn't been caught and is a child molester then he or she wouldn't show up in the database. Also the person could still be a child molester and has not 'checked in' and has fallen off the police radar map. So it's always important to be careful and wary for the welfare of your children. Always.

Visual Description of the Pain in My Head


Some days you just want to run screaming. This would be one of those days. Oh the humanity.

Iraqi Elections - Different Views of the Same Thing
It's always easy to say that media in it's various forms is biased. That the media looks at the same thing and comes to different conclusions based on their preexisting view points. Well the first Iraqi elections have just closed. There were bombings and attacks as expected but not at the level feared. People came out to vote, surprisingly so considering the usual arab level of violent rhetoric. You remember the usual quotes "Blood running in the streets" "Infidel dogs will blah blah blah" Well the voting has now been sandwiched between the punditry and the rhetoric of the elections. What say the news sources?

The Sunday Independent doesn't go very far at all to hide it's leftist leanings with this headline, The Sunday Independent'What a bloody charade' to describe the elections. The article doesn't say much except for the sort of churlish pablum you'd hear from a disaffected teenager who thinks he knows more than he actually knows.

AL Jazeera has an article about the elections "Attacks plague Iraqi election day" AL Jazeera story I read through the whole article and you'd be hard pressed to find out how election turnout was or what anybody thought about the elections from this collection of words. Instead you get a list of each and every attack that has occurred on this election day. A bit less loony than the word vomit from the Independent but not anything that a 11 grader on the school newspaper would have been allowed to write.

Now on Xinhua, the Chinese news service gives a good neutral headline. "Iraq election proceeds amid fatal attacks" Xinhau Iraqi election story No commentary, just the facts mamn. The first story to show any information about turnout. Don't know if it's accurate information "Voter turnout was low in the mainly Sunni-populated cities like Fallujah, but long lines of voters were seen in front of the polling stations in some Shiite Muslim and mixed Shiite-Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad and in southern cities like Basra." But that seems as neutral as possible. To understand the way the Chinese look at these things it's necessary to understand, well it's necessary to understand Chinese history, Chinese politics and the world situation as well as the way Chinese view the world situation. Okay, it's complicated. In a nutshell, China wants to be a big boy, they think they are a big boy, resent that they aren't a big boy and are prone to outbreaks of violence. Basically a self contained unit of seething anger that is afraid of the big guy on the block and could blow up at any time. Ah but that's another story.

Ever the pessemistic naysayer, Newsweek already has this story written and in the bag "Newsweek: Why election won't stop insurgency" MSNBC has the article- "Iraqis vote in historic election despite violence" MSNBC story Fair and balanced here, they mention the happy voters and the violence in the first paragraph.
They give the projected voter participation at the 52 percent supposed by Iraqi officials.

Fox goes out further as you would expect them to and state that 72 percent have come out to vote. Fox Iraqi Election story They balance out the violence reporting with the joy and jubulation of voter reporting and as you would expect they lean toward the positive voter participation part of the story. It's all the same thing with different slants and different reporting on the same story. If you need to have news that always agrees with your world opinion you know where to go and you know when to shut your ears. It's always the better bet to read all of the views and somehow, somewhere you can pull out the real information. Easiest way to do that is to hit Google news, follow the bottom link on a story which leads you to all 'related' news stories and you will get a chance to click through everybodies viewpoint of the same thing.

A steady hand
Now Playing: Cristina Branco - Canta Slauerhoff
I've actually set up an excel file to keep track of the blood pressure and other statistics related to heart and exercise. I've also managed to keep it up - the exercise part which is a good thing indeed. The singer Cristina Branco is a 'Fado' singer. Not really sure what that it means but it sounds good, it is a sweet female voice singing in Portugese and for me, that's all that matters.

Reading over at Xinhua news (China) that they've recently had a "International Symposium on the Death Penalty" held last month at Xiangtan in Hunan province. Of note they argue that China needs to abolish or curtail the use of the death penalty there when it ratifies the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Xinhau Death Penalty Article They argue, among other things that to abolish the death penalty would be a sign of the civilized society. The death penalty is one of the things that the United States holds in common with China. Ironic to think that China may abolish the death penalty before the United States.

Was watching the BBC World News on PBS this evening and they had a story about the marsh people of Iraq. The marsh people are folks who lived in the marsh lands and were considered to be disloyal and untrustworthy by Saddam. So he drained their marshlands to starve and drive them out. Much like Stalin when he would block escape from areas of the Soviet Union that were in drought and starving, Saddam was successful in destroying the people and their livelihoods. Well, with the Americans there the marshes have been allowed to marsh up again and those who had fled have come back. You see them in their boats poling through the marshlands. Another story you wouldn't hear on FOX News. Amazing.

Cold as Ice


Well, the inauguration went off alright, more troops there than there used to be at the old May Day Parades in Moscow and more booing than I've seen since the last football game but other than that, it went off and no bombs went off. Which means that the cowardly islamonazi's who like to blow up defenseless people simply have no ability to do so. All to the good. With the second term safely under way it's time to see what comes next. With that march of freedom speech by President Bush and every other nation on edge as to what that actually means it's time to look at the future. I keep hearing whispers about US troops starting to go into Syria to take out the folks who are supporting and sponsoring the terror campaign in Iraq. I keep hearing that Iran is being prepped for various actions to include identifying and blowing up their nuclear facilities. Japan is working a bit harder to drill for possible trouble with China, China is making it's usual noises about how Taiwan is a renegade part of China and how they will take it back. The US keeps it's fleet drilled and ready to stop any such attempt. North Korea is noisily talking their talk but nobody is listening that much. Pakistan and India are still getting used to their nuclear power and how that translates to the possibility of their cities actually becoming radioactive slag heaps at any miscalcuated moment. The world is on it's usual razors edge and any little nudge one way or the other could start the domino blocks of war to fall into our futures. So things should be interesting as usual.

124 systolic, 79 diastolic, pulse 94
This might be a trend for me. Blogging my blood pressure and heart rate. Did 55 minutes of cardio at minimum 141 heart rate but I kept it over 150 for most of the time. No strain at all.

127 systolic, 75 diastolic, pulse 97
I always lose my daily bp info. Not today. Taken right after cardio on a stepper and some weights. First time in a while that both systolic and diastolic were in normal range. Been fighting it a while. The pulse while doing stepper was 142 for thirty minutes. In the cardio workout you have to reach and then hold a target heart rate. Not a difficult workout. The picture is just something I did.

Morning Beam/Shaft of Light
Now Playing: Anouk - Graduated Fool
Topic: Mysteries of Life


Yeah. Bright and early at sunrise, bitter bitter cold and a clear sky. Something unusual at least in my experience. As the sun was coming up there was a discernable abnormality, there was a shaft of light shining straight up like a spotlight. The pictures don't do the sight justice, only had a camera phone to take a few pictures while in traffic as my only witness to the very odd sight. I also saw to the left of the sun a bit of a rainbow arching up. Very very strange, as the sun was coming up the light from it shot straight up. I kid you not. I would guess that it was an optical creation of uniformly distributed ice crystals in the atmosphere. Either that or a sign of the impending Apocalypse. It's got to be in the Book of Revelations somewhere - his coming heralded by the 'morning shaft of light' etc and so forth. Humm. I'll still bet on the ice crystals.

Mike Mancini
Topic: Physical Well Being


Nothing very interesting here to report. The phone is working again and so the prospect of being stuck on the side of the road in a blizzard or swept away in a flood is a bit less likely. Not that it's ever been likely since I tend to stay away from situations where wrath of god stuff can occur. Been finally making it regularly to work out. I've got the pain and stiffness to show for it. Happily those heart rate monitors show that mine is doing just fine and I've worked it hard. Technology is nice. The picture is of Mike Mancini, a fine musician and a fine fellow.

Safety is a phone that works.
Now Playing: Let the Bodies Hit the Floor
Topic: Mysteries of Life


Indeed, safety is a phone that works. And in other news, it's grey outside today. Like every day.

Now Playing: Daniel Bedingfield
Topic: Mysteries of Life


A trip, a camera, and you get pictures like this. Road warrior that I am I'll simply take shots over the steering wheel. If you can recognize this city then you are a better man than I. And in other news, my poor old Broncos got their butts handed to them by the Colts. Alas. I didn't have any expectations about that game so I was not very put out by it all. For the first time I'm watching a bit of the '24' show. It seems good so far. I've always liked Kiefer Sutherland from Young Guns and from Lost Boys and of course from remembering his dad Donald from Kelly's Hero's. A classic romp.

No Tone
Now Playing: Playoff game
Topic: Mysteries of Life
Well at least I don't have to wait for the mail now. Sometime next week a phone shows up. Maybe. I think. Of note in other things, DAZ is giving away Michael and Victoria. If you don't know what those are, they are 3D figures for use and abuse in the program called Poser. Very exciting - for somebody.



In other news somebody googled me together with UD Law School. Who knows what that was about but I did follow the google to find an old orphaned set of pages at the school Orphaned Law School Pages A nice description of Clinic and what we did there. My name is mentioned as well as everybody else who was in clinic at the time. Deanna, Wyman, Derek to name a few. Wyman and I were partners, we did a trial together and were taking different parts of the trial. When his part came up near the end of the trial he froze up and I had to spring up to do his bit. He never did thank me for that. I emailed the school and the professor in charge of Clinic now to let them know about these old orphaned pages so they can delete them. If you want to see where I sat at Clinic you'd need to go look at the above link before Monday.

Day Five - No Phone
Mood:  don't ask
Now Playing: Chris Rea - Mention of Her Name
Topic: Mysteries of Life
Yes indeed. No phone for yet another day. Called the customer service. Spoke with a computer. Actually spoke with a computer, actually prompted to speak what was wrong with my phone into the speaker and the computer correctly decided to send me to a customer representative. So, twenty minutes later after jarring rap music, 80's Madonna and other music selections that defied description - punctuated by overly loud and comparatively shrill statements of regret over my not being able to speak with an actual person just yet on account of the fact that all representatives were busy with other people who had probably called an hour before I was finally connected to a loudly ringing phone. This was my clue that perhaps a real person was on the other end momentarily. Well it was, a sweet sounding female voice, soothing and pert who already sympathized with my plight and instantly regreted all of the problems I had ever had in my entire life. Just the way she had been trained. Someone professionally trained to talk jumpers off of ledges, trained to sooth the raging customer who had already had all he or she could take.

Yes, I wasn't mistaken. My order had been put in. No error on my part had resulted in me being dropped and now in need of being shoved into the system again. No indeed. It seems that there was and is a backorder on my particular phone so my next day delivery would in fact be another four more days, give or take a couple of days. What a complete load of you know what. So, I am again and continue to be naked, phoneless. Unable to reach out and touch anyone. If I was a tomato I'd be a stewed tomato.

Day Four - No Phone
Mood:  down
Well, Monday my phone died and a trip to the far from home T - Mobile center got me acknowledgement that my phone was not working and that the best, the very best they could do for me was to mail me a replacement. I gritted my teeth and said alright. Send me another phone. Don't think about the fact that I'm a thousand miles from home and without a phone and on the road. That would be what would they call it - oh yeah - customer service. Wouldn't want any of that going on. Nope, let's don't work on the goodwill or the fairness thing at all. I was encouraged to buy a brand new phone though. That was nice of them. Well I paid extra for the next day delivery and of course, no phone. It's Thursday. The problem was Monday. It's Thursday. Geez.

Butterflies and Urinals
Mood:  crushed out
Now Playing: Dark City
Topic: Mysteries of Life
Silly interesting site here http://Urinal Picture Sitewww.urinal.net/ Found the link on Boing Boing. It's one of those natural laws of the internet which says that if you might have thought of doing something because it seems silly and satirical then someone has indeed done it. I've contemplated the idea of just taking various pictures of various urinals from everywhere and putting them up. Yup, standing there, doing not that much, just thinking. You know, unless there is some strange fellow beside you and your thoughts are there- cautiously wary. :-)
Another picture here.

Butterfly discussion later.