Sorry I've been delinquent in posting for awhile, but I've had neither time nor internet access. As of right now, I'm sitting at a console in the business center of a Holiday Inn in Great Falls, Montana. As soon as I can, I'll post a run down of the last two weeks, including the wedding, Banff, and pictures of all of the above.

In the mean time, the Dodgers are one game out in the NL West. Pray for them.

Until later...

In Montana. Posting will be brief. Writing from the GF public library right now because no one at home wants to call up Qwest to fix the damned internet. Updates pending. Gotta roll.

MAYHEM.

Hugo Chavez is a simpleton.

This is starting to get annoying. I can put up with the conspiracy wanks who wax on about how the US government orchestrated the September 11 attacks. I can even tolerate the occasional BYU professor hypothesizing on the subject. I cannot tolerate world leaders making idiotic comments to the effect that the US caused the attacks as a pretext for invading Afghanistan and Iraq based upon erroneous claims that they see on TV in countries where said leaders control everything that's on the airwaves in the first place.

Hugo Chavez indicated that this theory is plausible and that an investigation should be conducted to determine American involvement in the attacks. "A plane supposedly crashed into the Pentagon, but no one ever found a single remnant of that plane."

They didn't, huh? Well, I found the landing gear in there:

And a Rolls Royce engine or two:

And how did that wheel from the landing gear get in there?

And how did the American Airlines-styled exterior get onto the lawn?

There are more. There is clearly debris all over the lawn. There is green primer (used by Boeing) all over the interior. There are passengers bodies which I decline to post pictures of here (any picture you could ever want related to 9/11 can be found in the Moussaoui trial exhibits). If I can find all of this, then I'm sure that some Venezuelans putting together a documentary can too. Instead, they avoid the truth intentionally for satisfaction of a political agenda.

How sick and twisted can these people be?

Timberlake's got sexy covered. Today, I'm bringing the sweater vest back.

Carroll's new mascot

Ick. This is what they came up with for the mascot of a team called the Fighting Saints? I wouldn't know whether to high-five the thing or cuddle with it. Is there no St. Rottweiler we could have modeled this thing after? Or maybe St. George, the dragon slayer? St. Christopher, the man-killing giant? The St. Bernard just doesn't do it for me.

The government hates me too.

Back to the legislative history library again this morning. You have to pay a buck an hour to park in the adjacent lot, but they don't have individual meters on the spaces there. Each is numbered. You have to walk up to a single meter to the side of the lot, pop in some coinage, and plug in your number.

So I arrive at 9:10 and plug in one hour's worth of time. I'm cool until 10:10. I get back right about that time and see a ticket under my windshield wiper as I approach my car. The ticket is a handwritten carbon copy indicating that I had committed the offense of having an expired meter. How much is the fine going to set me back? This is information that the City of St. Paul feels should be hidden from the public apparently, since the ticket doesn't say. Instead, it instructs you to call the city in ten days to find out, like I'm turning in a damn lottery ticket or something.

That little omission from a simple boilerplate form is enough to set me off, but the other little detail had me ready to return to libertarianism. The time that I was given this ticket was 9:29. Let's review: I put an hour's worth of money in the machine for space #89 at 9:10. I get a ticket at 9:29, a point at which I have a frickin' property interest in that space for a further 41 minutes. Yet they give me a ticket. Just doling them out like candy on Halloween.

I called the number on the ticket to talk to a machine...that directed me to another machine. I eventually managed to connect to a human being who was even more worthless than a recorded human voice. I explain my situation. She tells me I can call back in ten days and get a court date for what will likely be about a $30 ticket. I asked if I could talk to the machine again.

What the hell is wrong with the people who make the decision to paper a machine with signs noting its defects rather than fixing them? Or the ones who design a parking ticket that doesn't even bother to note how much the ticket is for? It's not all government (looking at you, Dave), but the people who really have no reason to care. The problem is that we aren't voters to these people because they aren't elected. We aren't customers to them because they don't need our patronage. We're subjects because they take it. They realize over time that they can abuse the public like this while layering processes over processes (call a machine in ten days and find out when you can challenge your arbitrary $30 ticket in court) so that we would rather put up the $30 than deal with the hassle.

Well screw that. I don't care if it's a hassle. This has become a matter of principle now. I read once that William Wallace started his war against the English after they took away his fish. He caught it and they took it. It was just the straw that broke the camel's back. This is my fish, dammit. The City of St. Paul can have my $30 or $35 or whatever they frickin' decide it's going to be in ten days when they pry it from my cold, dead, lifeless hands.

The copier at the legislative history library on the capitol complex in St. Paul is the perfect embodiment of government bureaucracy:

• It won't copy the top three inches of your document if you line it up like you would on a normal printer;
• It charges 20 cents per page;
• When you push the coin return button, it will take no fewer than five minutes to actually release your change (no hyperbole here--it literally takes five minutes. You may as well go read a book or something until you hear the coins drop);
• When it finally does return your change, it will only give you nickels;
• Said nickels will only add up to 25 cents, even though the machine owes you 60; and
• Rather than fixing any of the above, the librarians cover the copier with signs indicating that you have to line up your margins differently, that it will take "a long time" to get your change back, and that the machine will only dispense nickels.

But how do I use it?!

HeadOn: Apply directly to the forehead.

HeadOn: Apply directly to the forehead.

HeadOn: Apply directly to the forehead.