Several years ago, after George W.'s first tax cut (which was designed to help the working class, but didn't), I received a mailing from a group called the League of Conservation Voters. They asked me to donate my tax rebate to them, rather than to spend it myself. They would in turn use the funds to help push environmentally-friendly legislation through Congress and, to a smaller degree, through state governments.

Fine, I thought, after reading their literature. That's a very good cause. Boy, was I wrong.

Part of the deal with the LCV was that they would in no way distribute my contact information. I didn't make a big deal out of the gift, I didn't claim it on a tax return, nothing. I just sent them a check for thirty bucks; it should be noted that I did not receive a dime from the tax refund. So I sent in the money, and I said to myself, Brian, that being my name, You've done a good thing. When the time to renew came around, I decided against it. I had enough on my plate, since it was right after graduating from college, and I had all this debt that I all of a sudden had to worry about.

And that's when the crap started hitting the fan. I sent in a letter to the LCV in one of their postage-paid return envelopes, explaining that I was glad I could help them the one year, but that I couldn't help them again this year. Sorry, good luck, enjoy your weekends, yadayadayada. Not two weeks after that, I began receiving mail from other eco-groups. The Sierra club, Robert Redford, the Tom Daschle letter that I referenced in an earlier post, all of this crap that just suddenly began appearing in my mailbox. I was aghast, and remain so: Shouldn't environmentally friendly groups start sending letters in envelopes that don't have plastic address windows, which render them unrecyclable? Shouldn't they send emails or something, so they don't waste trees?

Perhaps they should. Honestly, I would more welcome spam from The American Society to Prevent Deforestation of Rural Iowa than I would a piece of junk mail, since it's their paper that is contributing more to the Deforestation of Rural Iowa than anything *I'm* doing.

I finally got fed up with this crap this morning, and decided to give the LCV a call. Here's a rough transcript.
Them: "Thank you for calling the League of Conservation Voters."
Me: "Uhm, yeah, I want to talk to whoever is in charge of your mailing list."
Them: "Certainly, please hold." pause
Them: "This is [name deleted]."
Me: "Yes, my name is Brian Lewis, and I sent in a check to you guys a few years ago during your tax refund appeal..."
Them: "Thank you."
Me: "You're welcome. The thing is, I sent it in with the idea that you wouldn't be giving away my name and contact information, or any of that."
Them: "Oh, well...yes...at the time, that was true. But you see, we wound up hitting a bit of a budget crunch, so we sent out an appeal several months ago saying that we would continue to keep your name safe, but you had to return that appeal. You didn't have to give, but you had to at least let us know you didn't want to. It's called an 'opt-out' plan, you see..."
Me: "Yes, I'm familiar with that. Thank you." click.

Alright. I don't remember this. Perhaps I missed it; that's always possible. But that's not the point: the point is that I feel my trust was betrayed. Frankly, I'm a little pissed off that they would do that at all, rather than just ask for more money the old-fashioned way. No offense, guys, but if you have trouble raising money, maybe you oughta find a better platform to stand on.

So, to show my displeasure, I am refusing to recycle for the next year. I don't care what it is: aluminum cans, newspapers, diamond rings. Every ounce of it goes into the trash. I'm gonna go cut down a tree and piss in the stump. I have every intention of making sausage from a snowy owl. Maybe I'll sell it, call it the "LCV Special." I'm gonna donate 5 bucks to the Republican Party, and join the NRA. Just to piss those people off.

Have a nice frickin' day.

The high point of my summer: Berney has a red neck. It's from a sunburn, too, not just based on his socioeconomic background.

Thank you. Carry on.

Congratulations are certainly due to the current US administration. Not only have we managed to completely erode any trust from other countries which had been built by Clinton, George Herbert Walker Bush, and even Ronald Reagan, George the Younger has ALSO, it seems, managed to bring down Tony Blair (this is a bad thing, for those who do not know it) to his level, if not to destroy his own administration.

From FoxNews (of all places):
"Prime Minister Tony Blair's (search) government has been on the defensive over two dossiers, published in September and early this year. The government has acknowledged that the second document included material from a student thesis lifted from the Internet.
"The two documents were a key part of the government's argument for military action in Iraq.
" 'It is important, amid all this coverage, to realize that the contents of that dossier -- and, indeed, of the first dossier which I presented to the House -- are accurate,' Blair said."
Read the complete story here

Jeez...you'd think the guy was Ari Fleisher. First off, the second dossier included information which has already been proven to be forged (not inacurate, but patently false): the claim that Iraq was trying to build a new atomic weapons program, based on documents from Italy. Tough Titties, Tony. You're out.

Next, the latest non-news, again from Fox, stating that the U.N. Has found no link between Iraq and al Qaeda. This was the sort of thing that Colin Powell and President Bush really needed the world to believe - after all, weapons of mass destruction are nothing unless there's somebody around to actually carry the damned things to a good place to use them. What I find truly interesting is that even Israel, a sworn enemy of Iraq, never felt threatened enough by the "ties" or "WMDs" to actually act in support of the US, either in the United Nations or in Iraq itself. Australia, however, apparently puppy-dogged around behind us. I remember hearing stories about them de-mining ports along the Gulf.

Now, don't take this as an attempt to belittle the actions of US troops...they're brave, and they're doing what they're told, when they're told to do it. Those are the hallmarks of a good armed forces, and I'd like to see every one of the boys and girls in camo come home. Tomorrow, if possible, but of course, now that we've blown an entire country to bits, that really won't be.

This is, however, a further rant into my total disdain for President Bush. Honestly, the man has surrounded himself with advisors whispering into his ears, very Rasputin-like, and fed him lies that he has apparently taken to heart. "Cutting stock dividend taxes will help me - err, the economy," or "Oh, yes, al Qaeda is headed by Saddam Hussein's next door's brother's nephew's cousin's father's college roommate...we should bomb them to pieces. By the way, all contract negotiations? Just let me handle them."

Very few times in my life have I been ashamed to be an American, but frankly, George the Lesser is definitely pushing my buttons. I'm just hoping that some Democratic candidates are willing to push his, too; get him to do something stupid, and don't let anyone ever forget it until November. I mean, it's only right. That, and maybe, just MAYBE, somebody will finally do a public inquiry into exactly what the hell went wrong over there and back home in DC.

Sum kats are stoopid.

http://www.kicken.com/funnyfiles2/www.kicken.com-funny.cats.wmv

Kirsten alerted me to this one:
A George Washington High School student attempted to sneak into a position to view the girls' showers during or after gym class, became startled, and lodged himself in between a pair of walls in the school. After classes ended, the boy called his father on a cell phone, who came and broke him out with the age-old method of hitting the wall with something heavy. In this case, that was a hammer.

See the full story here, and another story on the same subject, though slightly shortened, here.

Honestly, now I'm ashamed to be from the same state as this kid. Jeez...when I grew up, if we wanted to peep at the girlies, we did it right, didn't get caught by The Man, and we sure as hell didn't get stuck in the process.

Thank you, carry on with your day.

As I mentioned I would in an earlier post, I now have an update on what's going on at work.

I officially have nothing to do. Zero, zilch, nada, squat. My inbox is empty, and within the vertical files that hold the prospects I would normally be calling, you will find bupkus. I'm going to go starkers if I have to spend another freaking day doing freaking nothing. Honestly, I can't surf the web for 8 hours a day without some sort of non-positive effects rearing their ugly heads. Eyestrain, carpal tunnel, and the occasional bout with fatigue are already inching into my day, and let me tell you, I do not like it.

Without reading any farther, one would be inclined to believe that this is all my doing, that I ought to ask people for more work, and you know what? One would be right. So I took it upon myself to go out and ask people for work. The result? Nobody has anything for me to do. Trust me, I asked around, and all I managed to get myself was a bit of arranging Eliot Committee meetings in various cities, but that's it, and it only lasted me about 10 minutes a day. Right now, I can't call them, becuase I've made as many attempts as I can without sounding like a whiny little troll.

So this is where I become the troll. I wish I had work. Maybe if I click my heels together enough...

"There's no work like...there's no work...I mean...shit!"

Now is the dead time.

Six weeks of nothing but baseball to keep me company. No football, no hockey, not even any basketball. It's sad, really, especially because I don't get baseball on my non-cable television more than two days a week. It's like the NFL preseason...nothing important is happening, and if it is, then I'm sure as hell not seeing it. It's almost enough to make me wish that I was shelling out the forty bucks a month for cable.

And that brings me to another point (I am the segue master). In the buildings on either side of me, residents can get Charter Pipeline, the cable modem service provided by Charter Communications. Charter Pipeline has a cost associated with it, of course; it's not free. But I think that having it may be cheaper than having DSL on my phone line, plus I get an added bonus that SBC, so far as I know, can't provide: The Cartoon Network.

Cartoon network is possibly the greatest channel ever created. Every day, for 24 hours, they show cartoons. Old cartoons, new cartoons, cartoons by amateur artists, anime, Batman, Superman, Goku, G.I.Joe, the original Transformers, Buttercup...the list of characters and shows goes on and on. Animation is the height of true broadcast art, let me tell you. All they need is the Thundercats to make that network the television equivalent of the Duomo. I'll admit that showing "The New Teen Titans" is maybe a waste of half an hour, but I'm sure somebody out there likes it. (By the way, Thundercats is on Cartoon Network, too. Heehee).

And, of course, I'd get the high-speed internet access that comes with a cable modem. I'm sure it could compete with the DSL in non-peak hours, and certainly in price.

But that's neither here nor there. The reason that the buildings on either side have the opportunity for charter pipeline is that the building owners have given their blessing to Charter to re-cable the buildings, something which my current landlord has not done...those old-school cloth-covered CoAx cables just can't carry the signal required for digital cable and internet access. But then, why SHOULD the landlords do that? After all, the sink and bathtub in my apartment are original to the building as well. And despite having four washer and dryer hookups, you will find but three of each...apparently, providing decent service to the residents at no cost whatsoever is a foreign idea to Kohner Properties.

So, let me finish with this: Kohner Properties=bad. Thundercats=bad, but fun. Amber Bock=good.

Today I celebrate my one-year anniversary at the Alumni House with one thing that has become more and more my domain: Boredom.

I will admit, my job has a very sinusoidal workload (nods to Berney for that one). Before Christmas, and at the start of June, every monkey with a job in Alumni and Development Programs is on a trip, and they all want me to arrange those trips. That's fine; I mean, I'm paid to do that sort of thing. More to the point, that is all I'm paid to do. I don't fundraise, I don't organize events, I'm the Cris Carter of appointment scheduling. And I'm fine with that.

The problem, and here's where the bitchfest starts, is that after that first week of June, I have nothing to do. I've tried to drag my workload out a bit, which I guess can be construed to be a good thing. I mean, I don't want to feel like I'm taking from the University without giving anything in return*. I don't want to sound overly pithy, but I like to at least do some work every now and then.

But, alas, I've been too good for my own good. Some of the directors have actually asked me to stop arranging appointments. You might as well ask a politician to stop fundraising, or ask Al Gore to stop being an inveterate prick. If I stop arranging appointments, then I will have no purpose, no reason to exist. "Sorry guys, David asked me to stop working, so I'm going to cease being in about 5...4...3...2...1...[pop]"

So now I have to go ask the boss what exactly I should do with myself. I'm absolutely terrified that she's going to ask me to stuff envelopes or something. Now, I do recognize that I'm basically a glorified secretary, but that glorification protects me from having to do the menial tasks that are generally assigned to secretaries of the non-glorified varieties.

I'll post an update when I know more, but for now, I think I'm going to push the office furniture together into some sort of fort. And hide there.


*Some of the readership might say that in my four years of education, the University took about $130,000 from me. True. But let's, for the moment, pretend that I'm capable of compartmentalizing my various times here, and can keep my employee and student experiences separate.

I don't really know if I have anything to say here, so I'll merely recap the last 3 days.

Thursday: Liz was forced to spend the night here, although it wasn't nearly as bad as that sounds (right, L-Slice?). Apparently, Berney decided to kindasorta tell his parents that he and Liz are living together, which is a major step. To protect everyone involved, Berney and Liz agreed that it be best that Berney be alone to break the news. So Liz came over, and we spent the evening watching television and playing life. A good time was had by all. Wooooo.

Friday: I learned that Berney and his parents reached a sort of "gentlemen's agreement" regarding Berney's living status. Here's a hint for the future: when trying to gently break the news of sinful living arrangements, hide the flowers. They're a tip-off. The evening was spent alone with my TV. Ah, TV...my greatest friend.

Saturday: I had to wake up really, really, really freaking early today to go to work at Channel 9 today. Channel 9, for those who don't know or care, Channel 9 is a public television station here in StL, and now is fundraising time. Most of the 8-and-one-half hours I spent there were boring, lame, and slow. Occasional bouts of excitement were punctuated by sleep. Thankfully, I got paid for it. I get to go back tomorrow! WHeeeeee!!!! The best part isn't that I get to go back and be bored silly, it's that I get to work from 4 PM to 12:30 in the morning! WHeeeee!!!!

Somebody shoot me.

I just returned from a trip to visit the family all over the mid-Atlantic states (by "mid-Atlantic," I mean Ohio and WV). I have to say, aside from the fact that it is perhaps the ugliest Toyota Corolla ever manufactured, my car sure does have some kick left in it.

Now, I know that I need to get a front end alignment and new tires for the same. But still, if you can ignore the fact that the car shakes like a San Andreas-brand Slinky above 90 miles an hour, it's a great car. The ride was smooth and quiet, and I get the feeling that a new alignment job will help to get rid of the shakes.

The biggest problem I have with my car is that it's incredibly old and ugly. However, student loans being what they are, I really don't feel comfortable trying to take on car payments along with everything else that I have to pay for now. I mean, I can't say that I wouldn't LIKE to, and perhaps it would be a wise investment. But, really, I have so many other things to worry about right now that the idea of another 150 dollars a month in payments to ANYBODY just freaks the shit out of me.

As for the vacation, it went quite well. I managed to schedule in the added pleasure of seeing Marlena Wu, a friend from school, in Dayton. She's doing a PsyD program at Wright State University, a school which has taken the whole "modern campus" theme to the extreme. I guessed that all of the buildings on the campus were built in the 1980s, and I wasn't far off: Marlena tells me they're all from the early 70s, including the graduate student housing (non-academics call these buildings "apartments." Weirdos). So on this visit, she took me on a tour of Dayton, which I have to say is among the most truly midwestern towns around. That is to say that it's boring. No offense, M-dawg.

Now, not all of Dayton is boring. They have a very nice mall, but the streets are straight, slightly dusty, and empty, as is the rest of downtown. Perhaps because it was a Saturday, everyone was at the mall. Or the could have been...
...in the porno district. Daytonians call this the "Oregon District." For those of you who are uninitiated in the ways of Ohio, there is an Oregon district or an Oregon suburb of just about every mid-to-large Ohio city. There's one in Columbus, one in Cleveland, one in Toledo, and one near Akron. I don't know why. But the Dayton Oregon district is special. Here, one may find a martini bar, a record shop, a gay-oriented book store, an Irish-pub-themed bar, and a leather shop. Don't forget the most eclectic book store around, with sci-fi on the left, comic books in the middle, and porno novels on the right. The porno novels have such great titles (see the post from 6/4 for further rants on this topic) as "Swedish Captives" and "She Takes All Comers!" Badly written for your adult-themed pleasure, but please don't touch the Batmobile toy, or any of the thousands of other Happy Meal toys, on your way out.

Now, the rest of the visit was quite nice. I got to see the folks, the fam, and the cats in Charleston, as well as my aunt and uncle's new house. Also, my cousin Rich's graduation in Toledo was a nice distraction from the otherwise mundane life my family can lead sometimes.

My mother suggested to me that my poor old Corolla be retired around August, and that I not ask it to make another trip back east. If it weren't such a pleasant surprise to see the car make it back and forth on the thousand-mile round-trip journey every time, I might be inclined to believe her. But really...that car's got spunk, no matter what else I or anyone else may say about it. And besides, Dayton just won't be the looking at it through a windshield which is actually cleansed by its wipers, and the guy-friendly dress store there in the Oregon District practically screams out for a car with a pink quarterpanel to be parked in front. Who am I to deny it that?

So Kirsten and I have picked up our old habit of reading books to each other as we talk on the phone. Last night, she decided that she wanted me to read her Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the third book in the what-will-be-seven-book series.

So I was reading the book, and there's a character in the series named Hermione Granger. Hermione's a smart girl, or a smart witch, or a smart whatever. You can describe her as you wish. She's also one of Harry's two friends. Harry, I should point out for those of you who don't know, apparently has poor social skills. But enough about that! Back to Hermione.

To add flavor to the story, I opted to read characters in different voices, and for some reason did my best Girl 6 impersonation for Hermione, both speaking and in written correspondence. This got really funny at about the time I read, "P.S.: Percy's head boy." (Head boy, of course, signifies that Percy Weasley is no more than a tool of the man, sort of like head hall monitor.)

That Freudian phrase, combined with the slutty, breathy voice, of course caused both Kirsten and I to giggle incessantly. And, because I live my life vicariously through people like Ron Jeremy and John Holmes, I had a great idea:
Harry Potter porn.
Think about it: It's a famous franchise, and lends itself to pornographic titles like no movie since Saving Private Ryan. If we change the character's name to avoid true copyright dilution, we get:
-"Harry Crotcher and the Sorcerer's Bone." (This one is the twist title for the intelligencia)
-"Harry Crotcher and the Chamber of Pleasure." (For you S&M buffs...please, please don't make yourselves known)
-"Harry Crotcher and the prisoner of Asskaban." (My favorite)
-"Harry Crotcher and the Pot of Honey." (This one probably takes a minute)
-The currently unreleased "Harry Crotcher and the Order of the Penis."

I know these these titles aren't the most original around. I'm sorry; I can't help that. Pornographic titles are not supposed to be witty, profound, or even worth the ink they're printed in. "No Man's Land 17?" Please, they're all the same. Just call it "Lesbian Sex [year][date of release]." How about the classic "Femalien" series? That was a decent title. That's a title that calls out, "We're porn stars, and we can dress in shiny suits, too!"

Then, there is the best-named pornographic series ever: Ass Angels.

I've never seen it, and I really don't want to. But I'll admit one thing: that title is really funny to say.

God bless the shiny full-body suits. Good night, everybody.

Good lord, it's been a while since I posted.

I'll make this one short and sweet:
The sun sucks, especially when you get a sunburn on only like 3 inches worth of each leg, at the knee, on the left side of your leg. What the hell is that? I mean, jeez...at the very least, it could at least be symmetrical. Or, it should be. But is it? NOoooooOOooOOooo. Of course not. Because that would be too easy.

And so is the final result of my most recent St. Louis Cardinals experience. I went with a couple of friends (Berney and Chris, who may actually be my only audience on this page) to Scott Rolen Bobblehead day at Busch Stadium. After an interesting line to get in, we collected our bobbleheads and got to watch what would otherwise be a wonderfully suspenseful game. The sunburn sort of ruined it, though. And the worst part is that this was Sunday....Monday's weightlifting experience taught me that sunburned skin sticks to vinyl thigh pads in the weight rooms. And that, my two-person audience (one person?) sucks.

Anyway, Saturday night's dinner took place at an eating establishment called Wonton King. If they would pay me, I would advertise for them, hands down. Great food, outstanding service, empty dining room except for a group of 5 that thoroughly enjoyed itself.

Get a map and phone number.

This place rules. Check it out. It was formerly the Hunan Star on South Brentwood, across from the Galleria mall, and then they moved to a place where they maintain their customer base from Washington University, but pay much less rent. Go them.