July 31st, 2008 by Max
The man who made Bush … is lurking!
Ut Oh! This stinks of classic Karl Rove. Attack your opponent on his strength. Obama is popular, make that bad.
It might not work though. Popularity isn’t such an awful thing.
Another Obama strength is that he is intelligent. Can Rove make him dumb too?
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July 31st, 2008 by Max
For anyone who won’t say “on the ground” or “moving forward” ANY MORE!
Please people. Think of a sentence that means something!
Ya know how you can have fun with fortune cookies by saying the words “in bed” after you read your fortune? Try saing it everytime you hear someone say “on the ground” or “move forward”.
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July 31st, 2008 by Max
This is pulled from Barb’s blog. Permission to post is pending.
http://utterloonacy.blogspot.com/2008/07/do-you-see-what-i-see.html
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July 31st, 2008 by Max
Yes!
He of the bridge to nowhere. In truth it was to an island with 14 people on it. He brought many more dollars to Alaska, than what his consituents paid. Some of that was my money. And Alaskans get an oil subsidy from the Federal Government!
But does that bother me? No. Well, yes, ok it does. But what else bothers me is he appears to be someone who either didn’t think the rules applied to him, or just thought he could get away with corruption.
He’s a hard ass. And he’s out of touch.
From WIRED.com [...] the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes.
Fine, but he’s voting on Net Neutrality.
And he’s a bastard!
And he took, yes, aledged to have taken $250,000 worth of construction services on his house … for free.
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July 28th, 2008 by Max
Barb and I went on a two day excursion from The Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge to the Adirondacks. These are the best of the trip.
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July 26th, 2008 by Max
I had occasion last week, to go to the Binghamton Mets game to see an old friend of mine. Ok. We’ve never met, but he did so much for me, during so many playoff games with My New York Yankees, that I consider Orlando El Duque Hernandez like a friend. He struggled. Injured his foot and was taken out of the game, and yet he stood there, struggled there, with such dignity, that my respect was only increased:
We later had another visitor … more on that later.
Posted in Arts, My New York, Photos, Sports | 1 Comment »
July 24th, 2008 by Max
There’s a local oil company that serves this area.
My unlce told me “Mirabito owns that town” back when I first considered moving up there. He wasn’t that far wrong. They have recently moved to the next bigger town, but they still have offices here in my small town.
They sell a LOT of gasoline.
They charge the local people from whence they came, 10 cents a gallon more than the people get charged in the next biggest town. They have near a monopoly and they’re putting it to us!
You’d think they might give the people in this small (pop 4000) town a break since they know everyone here … BUT NO! They take advantage of their friends by charging them more than what is available 30 miles away. At this time of savings, wouldn’t you think they’d not make the locals drive to another town to get gas?
No they don’t. They squeeze us. I’m sick of Mirabito.
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July 23rd, 2008 by Max
Here’s my new favorite pet peeve.
Come on in, get a special card, and we’ll give you 5 cents off each gallon of gas you buy with our card.
Really? FIVE CENTS!! Really?
Back when gas was a dollar … 5 cents was 5 %. Not much savings 5 %, but not bad. Now. 5 cents is 1 and 1/4 of a percent.
I usually buy about 10 gallons of gas. I could save 50 cents. With that I can go into the gas store and buy 1/2 of a bottle of soda. Almost.
Give me 10 % off. That would be 40 cents. That would save me $ 4.00 per fill up. THAT, would be worth my turning around. That would be buying ten gallons get one free. One every ten? Might make it worth it.
Come on people. Let’s stop waiting in line for an hour for 5 cents off!
And let’s open the strategic oil reserve. Winter is coming and those of us in the northeast are scared.
5 cents off! Kiss my ass!
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July 22nd, 2008 by Max
Sage Tyrtle on http://quirkynomads.com/wp/2008/07/08/wandering-toronto/
Suggested that everyone send her 1 minute of sounds from their home town. I made some recordings. Found that when i had to pay attention to what I was hearing, I became fascinated by the sounds I was recording. In the process I’ve collected a few sounds that I may share again in bits and pieces or in whole, here. I think I’ll probably grab some more sounds too. Its fun. And it really made me notice stuff. I know. That’s the kind of thing everyone says … and its not like being blind. I don’t know what its like being blind.
Its more like living next to a major street on a rainy day and working in a factory and going to the grocery store … with your ears open.
This is the first clip I made. Its the rain. Maybe the most surprising thing is how attached I was to these sounds, and how I hated to cut them down to a minute.
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July 16th, 2008 by Max
4 of 5 Smiling Maxes
Maybe more.
The further I got away from this movie the more I liked it. And I liked it a lot at the end. Normally I don’t go for this kind of movie. Normally I don’t like to see a movie the someone else had reviewed. I like to go into them cold, with no biases. But fortunately for me, what I remembered of the review by the TTN guys just gave me no clue how much I would like this movie. This is the third in a trilogy of movies that I watched aso that we could discuss them on Countless Screaming Argonauts. This may have been the best one.
I didn’t see Blair Witch. But I understand the camera work was modelled after that movie’s style.
Interestingly I’ve already described this movie to friends as rediculous. But it was rediculous in a good way. The camera was an unnecessary trapping for people in so much trouble, but they explained it away addeqautely enough so that I’m willing to suspend my disbelief.
You start out not sure who’s who much less whom to like in this movie, but as you slowly slide up to the edge of your seat for the danger and thrills, you pretty much marry the whole cast … It may be hard to relax while watching this movie, but it is not hard to watch!
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July 15th, 2008 by Max
3 of 5 Smiling Maxes
Will Smith, as always, holds the screen. Not sure what it was about this movie that kept it from being a 5. I don’t think it was the ending [which I won't give away] but about it I will say that some of my friends didn’t like it.
To me, I think it had to do with the fact that it just didn’t give me the same feel as the original Charleton Heston movie did. That was a little more scary, a little more gripping … If you liked I Am Legend, then rent The Omega Man!
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July 14th, 2008 by Max
4 of 5 Smiling Maxes.
My system is, do I like this movie as I’m watching it? Do I feel like I’ve gotten a good deal for my entertainment dollar after its over. And finally, as I look back on this movie does it sit well in my memory days and months later.
At 2:32 its a bit long. Its fair enough to have a long movie because it is telling the story of a life and albeit a short life, this is a story worth telling.
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July 14th, 2008 by Max
Maybe it was just because the weather was closing in. Maybe I just got lucky. Maybe it was only 1 eagle in two different places, but I saw this guy and a bunch of vultures. He was being hassled by some small bird and in a couple pictures he was screaming. This is the best picture of the day … which made my day!
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July 12th, 2008 by Max
Here is an excerpt from a Jimmy Carter speech in 1977. Beneath it is an excerpt from the Answers.com about the DOE. [emphasis added]
CARTER
The first principle is that we can have an effective and comprehensive energy policy only if the government takes responsibility for it and if the people understand the seriousness of the challenge and are willing to make sacrifices.
The second principle is that healthy economic growth must continue. Only by saving energy can we maintain our standard of living and keep our people at work. An effective conservation program will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs.
The third principle is that we must protect the environment. Our energy problems have the same cause as our environmental problems —wasteful use of resources. Conservation helps us solve both at once.
The fourth principle is that we must reduce our vulnerability to potentially devastating embargoes. We can protect ourselves from uncertain supplies by reducing our demand for oil, making the most of our abundant resources such as coal, and developing a strategic petroleum reserve.
The fifth principle is that we must be fair. Our solutions must ask equal sacrifices from every region, every class of people, every interest group. Industry will have to do its part to conserve, just as the consumers will. The energy producers deserve fair treatment, but we will not let the oil companies profiteer.
The sixth principle, and the cornerstone of our policy, is to reduce the demand through conservation. Our emphasis on conservation is a clear difference between this plan and others which merely encouraged crash production efforts. Conservation is the quickest, cheapest, most practical source of energy. Conservation is the only way we can buy a barrel of oil for a few dollars. It costs about $13 to waste it.
The seventh principle is that prices should generally reflect the true replacement costs of energy. We are only cheating ourselves if we make energy artificially cheap and use more than we can really afford.
The eighth principle is that government policies must be predictable and certain. Both consumers and producers need policies they can count on so they can plan ahead. This is one reason I am working with the Congress to create a new Department of Energy, to replace more than 50 different agencies that now have some control over energy.
The ninth principle is that we must conserve the fuels that are scarcest and make the most of those that are more plentiful. We can’t continue to use oil and gas for 75 percent of our consumption when they make up seven percent of our domestic reserves. We need to shift to plentiful coal while taking care to protect the environment, and to apply stricter safety standards to nuclear energy.
The tenth principle is that we must start now to develop the new, unconventional sources of energy we will rely on in the next century.
These ten principles have guided the development of the policy I would describe to you and the Congress on Wednesday.
Our energy plan will also include a number of specific goals, to measure our progress toward a stable energy system.
These are the goals we set for 1985:
REAGAN
Although Ronald Reagan criticized the department during his 1980 election campaign as an example of government wastefulness and unwarranted governmental control of private enterprise, he did not abolish the department once in office. The department’s chief subdivisions direct programs in energy, environmental quality, national security, and science.
The period since DOE’s inception has seen a shift in focus in view of America’s changing needs within the global landscape. Faced with the energy crisis of the late 1970s, DOE directed its efforts toward development and regulation of energy resources.
… buildup that took place under the administration of President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s saw DOE turn its attention to nuclear weapons research, development, and production. With the end of the Cold War, DOE entered a new phase, in which its emphasis was on nonproliferation, nuclear stewardship, retooling of nuclear weapons for peaceful uses, and environmental cleanup. Read the rest of this entry »
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July 11th, 2008 by Max
Is today your lucky day? It was a good day for me. I’m a rationalist. I’m a skeptic. But lets face it. Today is 7-11. I’m going to gamble~
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July 10th, 2008 by Max
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avxpn_MsPYs&NR=1
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July 10th, 2008 by Max
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSAOQuLxSdY&NR=1
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July 10th, 2008 by Max
Let’s talk politics.
How about this Mister Obama? I just go and write a nice piece about hope and faith in a better world, and he goes and signs up for the G W B faith based initiatives version of the constitutional destruction? And then absolves the phone companies of legal liability for sending all of our personal communication information to the government. This was BIG BROTHER when the little unit proposed it. Is it really not that now? Plus he used his daughters on the Today show to show that he’s got a nice family, after saying that family was off limits.
Herbert said Obama was lurching to the right.
He right. I guess he’s trying to protect his right flank by not letting McCain get that conservative vote without a fight.
Maybe its a good tactic. Maybe if he caters to the arch conservatives he can privatize social security next and put all the illegal aliens on bus to Mexico City.
There goes idealism.
Shit.
http://my.barackobama.com/page/group/SenatorObama-PleaseVoteAgainstFISA
This looks like a better link.
http://get-fisa-right.wetpaint.com/
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July 7th, 2008 by Max
Blogs are trouble. I didn’t know this at first, but I see it now. And with appologies to Max, I’ll use his favorite phrase … The thing of it is, is … you kninda need to know what you want to come out of your blog. For instance I wanted to be heard. I have things to say about myself and the world, and the world didn’t seem to have enough ears to hear them.
Sometimes, you want to yell at the world. If you blog, the world can hear you. A blog is not your best friend. A blog is a passive vessel echoing whatever noises you put into it. Echoes can be heard.
The thing of it is, is, if you don’t want the world to hear you, you have to keep your mouth shut. What if you don’t want all of the world to hear you?
The thing of it is, is, a blog is also a journal. Its for yourself too. So who you gonna write for? That’s the trouble.
I feel bad.
Like a lot of times when I feel bad I don’t know what to do about this. I got dumped. The thing is … the thing of it is, is, that I think I feel worse than I might have, considering the time this relationship has had to develop.
And so I wonder is, is it me? Do I feel bad because this relationship meant more to me than I thought it did? Or should? Or do I feel bad because the end came in an email? She said we’re in different places in our lives. Which, let’s be honest is fair and reasonable. But in an email! But then so what? Or is it this? “If you want to talk about it you can call me, okay?” Which is compassionate. Empathetic? Somehow I think this has something to do with it. I can’t hate her. I don’t hate her. I’m not really angry, at least I don’t think I am. Not really sure on this one.
Something makes me think this one shouldn’t hurt this much.
I can’t figure it out.
The trouble is … it does, and I have to write about it.
Posted in Max's Theories, Other People's Theories | 4 Comments »
Countless Screaming Argonauts