Phew, this calmed me down quite a bit. Thought I was gonna get ugly for a while there, not even a stroll across campus chilled me out.

It’s been too long since I’ve been pissed off. But the waiting is over. Just saw these pictures (extrememly graphic) that Xristos found similarly infuriating. Please forgive me if I don’t shed any tears when hearing about collateral damages caused in the cleaning-up of the dwindling Sunni triangle. Those kids are playing in the ashes of civilians who were murdered in their country to help them. Savage fucks. The only thing that might infuriate me more are pin-heads in civilized countries like mine who would excuse and honor such acts as defiance of imperialistic oppression, or reply with, “Well they shouldn’t have been in those peoples’ country anyway.” Again, these were civilian contractors, there to help rebuild the country and put it back on its feet. Get over your romantic delusions for the terrorist insurgency, comrades. If you ask me, we should quarantine the dwindling Sunni triangle and stop sending aid in. I’m pissed off now, but let these barbarians kill each other off; and the permanent Iraqi government can decide how to deal with ‘em.

When I was kid, I really liked taking stuff apart to see if I could figure out how they work. I still do it, but now it’s called “fixing the dryer.” It would be a real treat to take something apart again just for the sheer joy of quenched curiousity, like these guys did with a magic-8-ball. Found (like the next post) at Jaboobie, which is a fantastic website and thus enters the blogroll.

Oh jeepers cripes, this is funny. Found it at Jaboobie and 2*H*B*E. Check ‘em both out.

Sometimes, I’m real glad I was raised Catholic.

Cards traded Kerry Robinson to San Diego for the 1999 AL base-stealing champ Brian L. Hunter. (He stole 74 bases in 1997 according to ESPN!) I know that will make two people happy: one is Kerry, who wanted a starting job and wasn’t getting one in his hometown, now he can play center in one of the most beautiful cities in the country; the other is my friend Hansen, who was denied an autograph by Kerry a few offseasons ago and has never forgiven him. On paper it’s about an even trade–two speedy, undisciplined bench/minor-league players exchanging teams. But Kerry’s youth and left-handed batting are big upsides. And he was a very good hockey player in high school, making him naturally tough and an unusually solid outfielder in slippery conditions.

“Maybe we were a little bit sleepy.” That’s the excuse offered by the UN commander in charge of Kosovo’s peacekeeping force for having allowed a village 600 yards from his camp to be overrun and all its houses burned to the ground. As Jason of IraqNow asks, is anyone seriously advising turning Iraq’s security over to these guys? Six hundred yards from his camp, and he decides to evacuate the village, instead of repelling the lawless. What a fantastic way to send a message by failing to send a message.

Here’s a picture of a happy baby:

Here are some pictures from my trip to St. Louis. Not much there, I kept leaving it in the car.

Just reading an article about Ray Lankford and how he’s expected to emerge from Spring training as the Cardinals’ starting day left fielder. Here’s a comment from him:

The odds [of beating out all the other left-field candidates] were not good.

“Very slim,” he conceded — with the smile of someone who seems to have beaten those odds. “But I’m always out to try to prove people wrong. That’s my motivation. I still feel like I can play. It’s not about 36, that’s just a number. There are guys who are 26 that I’m in better shape than.”

I think he’s talking about me in that last sentence.

Seriously though, you remember how Ray Lankford left the Cardinals two years ago? It was a post-trade-deadline trade to San Diego for none other than Woody Williams. And I think we sent some money for them to take him off our hands. He was Captain Bring-Down in the clubhouse, and they took him off our hands. Woody has been on fire since donning the cardinal red, and Ray’s been a minor leaguer. If he can get back to the form he had when the outfield saw both him an Brian Jordan, we’ll be in great shape at a position I most certainly expected to be platooned. Of course, odds are that he won’t be able to stay healthy into the second half and Kerry will be playing in left most of the second half; but apparently Ray-Ray’s having a good time beating the odds.

The Blues are off to a 3-0 lead over the Blackhawks 11 minutes into the first period. We won yesterday, putting us in a three-way tie with Nashville and Edmonton. We need to pull this game off.

Got back from my trip to St. Louis last night. Watched Illinois lose to Duke. That wasn’t much fun. The team had a heck of a season though. If you were told that we’d make it to the sweet sixteen a few games into the big ten schedule, you wouldn’t have believed it. My vacation was a great time. I went to the Botanical Gardens, the Zoo, and took a trip to the top of the Jefferson Expansion Memorial for the first time since I was a wee lad. Also partied with the crew a whole bunch and had a great dinner at the Little Saigon Cafe. Tiger prawns. They were super. Also made it to the range one day where I found my skills have improved considerably since my last shooting expedition. Hit dead center twice from 15 yards with the CZ. Opening day is about a week off.

Citizen Smash went to an anti-war protest. Read the whole thing, including the stuff about Rebecca. It’s golden.

Per Chris’ request, guess which one is Saruman:

Got this from IlliniGirl… work today is encoding, lots of down-time.

“FIRSTS”

* FIRST JOB: McDonald’s working for my brother, who was a manager there at the time. My first real job was roofing with Dan Flynn.

* FIRST SELF-PURCHASED CD: The Cure: Wish. Still have it. Can’t understand why I bought it.

* FIRST PIERCING/TATTOO: Don’t have either. Although I had one drawn on my arm this morning. It was a heart that said “I (heart-symbol) Mom.”

* FIRST ENEMY: Never had one personally or I’d be in jail (or Belize) by now. There was a kid for some hockey team (Fox, I think) that kicked one of my teammates with the blade of his skate and ruptured his spleen. I laid some pretty slick hits on him the next time we played. I guess that would be it.

“LASTS”

* LAST BIG CAR RIDE: Nashville to Champaign. 380 miles.

* LAST KISS: Two hours ago.

* LAST LIBRARY BOOK: Conversation and Discourse by Paul Werth is sitting on my desk. Last fiction I got was “The Handmaiden” but didn’t have time to even open it up.

* LAST MOVIE SEEN: Once Upon a Time in the West. Got it on DVD last week. I saw Miracle in a Nashville theater called the Opry or something. The Rock was there the same night for the premiere of his new movie.

* LAST BEVERAGE DRANK: Drinking a Minute-Maid Lemonade

* LAST FOOD CONSUMED: Derald’s Bacon-double-cheeseburger and potato salad. Had scrambled eggs, a bagel, and grapefruit juice this morning.

* LAST PHONE CALL: Called my friend Chris up at 12 last night to see if he wanted to meet up for a cold one somewhere. He was already sleeping, the sally-girl.

* LAST CD PLAYED: This mix I made on the way to work. The last studio record I played was Golden Smog: Weird Tales.

* LAST ANNOYANCE: Can’t think of anything. My left contact itches a little bit.

* LAST SODA DRINK: Orange soda before I left home.

* LAST ICE CREAM EATEN: Breyer’s Natural Vanilla. Good stuff.

* LAST TIME SCOLDED: Can’t remember. Maybe two summers ago.

* LAST SHIRT WORN: Wearing a three-button short-sleeved collared thing. It’s got horizontal pinstripes with rows of alternating diagonal stripes in between ‘em.

I ….

* I AM: starting to notice that contact itching.

* I WANT: to do something useful and worthwhile.

* I HAVE: more than I deserve.

* I WISH: wishing worked.

* I HATE: terrorists.

* I FEAR: failure.

* I HEAR: hard drives spinning and air conditioning vents blowing air.

* I SEARCH: with Google.

* I WONDER: whether mind is a purely mechanistic, materialistic phenomena

* I REGRET: just about everything. I privately hold myself to unrealistic standards.

* I LOVE: beauty and decency

* I ALWAYS: look both ways before crossing.

* I AM NOT: particularly exciting.

* I DANCE: like a cross between Vanilla Ice and Axel Rose.

* I SING: Lionel Richie songs in the shower. And I make up funny lyrics to songs when I’m driving.

* I CRY: No, I don’t.

YES OR NO:

* YOU KEEP A DIARY: This blog is sort of a diary, but I don’t talk about very personal stuff.

* YOU LIKE TO COOK: Yeah, but not as well as my girlfriend. I can grill as well as anyone, I’d say.

* YOU HAVE A SECRET NOT SHARED WITH ANYONE: Nope.

DO YOU:

* HAVE A CRUSH: No.

* WANT TO GET MARRIED: Yes. I want to be a husband and a father someday.

* GET MOTION SICKNESS: I used to when I’d read on the schoolbus. I haven’t noticed it since junior high.

* THINK YOU’RE A HEALTH FREAK: Yeah right. I smoke a pack a day and drink quite a bit, but nowhere near as much as I used to. I eat pretty well though, and can run five miles without getting cramps or throwing up.

* CURRENT HAIR COLOR: blonde, a little reddish.

* EYE COLOR: Blue, sometimes a bit greyish

* BIRTHPLACE: Somerset, New Jersey

FAVORITES:

* NUMBER: Two

* COLOR: Charcoal

* DAY: Saturday.

* MONTH: I don’t know, August? I’m starting to like the summer weather a whole lot more than I used to. Mowing the lawn and barbecuing. Good times.

* SONG(S): The song you hear when you’re at the save menu of the old school Final Fantasy games. Honestly I couldn’t say what my favorite song is, but that one is pretty cool.

* SEASON: Summer, lately. I’m freezing!

* DRINK: Franziskaner Hefe-weizen, although I’ve been enjoying the Black and Tans lately.

PREFERENCES:

* CHOCOLATE MILK, OR HOT CHOCOLATE: both are so good, why choose?

* MILK, DARK, OR WHITE CHOCOLATE: white’s new to me, so probably that now.

* VANILLA OR CHOCOLATE: Vanilla.

IN THE LAST 24 HOURS, HAVE YOU:

* CRIED: No

* HELPED SOMEONE: Not to any significant degree that I know of.

* BOUGHT SOMETHING: Paid some postage at the post office.

* GONE TO THE MOVIES: No

* SAID, “I LOVE YOU.”: No

* WRITTEN A REAL LETTER: Wrote a postcard a week ago

* WRITTEN IN A JOURNAL: If this is a journal. I am going to see about submitting a paper about pronouns to one in a few weeks.

* HAD A SERIOUS TALK: No

* MISSED SOMEONE?: Yes, I miss people all the time. And I watched some old videos of my friends last night and this morning.

* HUGGED SOMEONE?: Yes, and lots.

Spring break starts for me in about an hour and a half. It’s going to be a good time. I’ll be leaving for St. Louis tomorrow and bringing my girl to meet ma. The first thing I do when I get to the Lou is stop in at Bulls-Eye for some target practice. Haven’t been to a range since around New Years. Far too long. Speaking of shooting, Hamas’ leader Sheik Yassin was killed today. This has led to some hilarious commentary over at Adam’s Morgan.

Bill Dennis, the Peoria Pundit (now permalinked with the rest of the locals for future perusal), must have enjoyed my drive-by reporting of an anti-war protest I saw on my way to the batting cages the other day, seeing as he saw fit to write about it. Seems to have gotten a kick out of my “Hippies Smell” t-shirt which I got here, along with this one. That website has a bunch of new ones too, my favorite says “Kick their ass, take their gas.” It’s not a serious political statement, but some of the locals round here would take it as one, and it would drive them nuts. Humor along the same lines as this shirt. Bill also kindly offers me this advice:

Be careful, Liam. The academic left is very intolerant of anyone who disagrees with them. They will, however, defend to the death the right of a college professor to advocate leftist and anti-American views … all in the name of academic freedom, of course.

In the four years I’ve been here, nobody in my department has complained about my conservative views, my support for both wars, or even the black armband I wore for two months during the Fall 2001 semester, from 9/12/01 until 11/13/01 when Northern Alliance forces entered Kabul. And that’s the Linguistics department, a field dominated by the great free-thinker, Noam Chomsky. My boss is pretty left-wing, but of a libertarian sort. We joke around about politics. I call him a rabble-rouser. I think everyone in this Linguistics department is too busy with research to free up the kind of time needed to engage in dissent crushing.

I saw a much, much smaller protest here yesterday while I was on my way to the batting cages. It was about a hundred pinkos walking around the county courthouse and city hall. Ironically, I was wearing my “Hippies Smell” T-shirt. I saw a little kid with a sign that said “Bush lies, more die!” What an asinine thing to make your kid do. He’s going to be ashamed of it ten years from now, or just a hopeless fuck-up with crappy parents to blame for it.

Finished all my audio scrubbing work this morning, then realized around 1:00 that the Illinois versus Cincinnati game was starting in a half hour. So I stopped the video work I was doing and headed out to a local watering hole. Chose to see it at the Esquire, a big joint with decent chow and a good-sized clientele. Also cheap beers and a competent selection of draft beers. We handed Cincy their asses. By the time I finished up some things at work and got to the bar, the score was 30-13. We couldn’t miss a three-pointer in the first half and our ball movement was a clinic. The last ten minutes of the game saw the two teams trading field goals, eating up clock, and us staying up by no fewer than 12. Final score was 92-68. I developed a real taste for black-and-tans. Those are some tasty brews. My pal Chris informed me a while back that the black-and-tan is a mixture of Irish brew (Guinness) and English brew (Bass), and they just don’t mix, get it? Of course, the half-and-half (Guinness and Harp’s) doesn’t mix either. On the way home, I listened to the mix CD I made this morning. Some observations: following up some Cypress Hill from the Temple of Boom album with Beatles from Revolver just doesn’t work at all; In the Air Tonight by Genesis is a fantastic song; LTJ Bukem’s Sunrain sounds really, really good on a decent sound system. I’d only heard it before on the little speakers hooked up to my office ‘puter at home, and they just don’t do it justice.

One of the reasons I read One Hand Clapping everyday is because I know the world changes all the time, even while I sleep, and there’s always commentary there about how it’s changed provided by someone with long experience in relevant affairs and a stubborn moral compass. There’s also anecdotes about weekend trap shooting competitions and links to interesting things that I most likely wouldn’t have noticed on my own. For example, I would have missed some of Dr. Seuss’s pre-WWII political cartoons, that are as cutting and relevant today as they were then, with hindsight as our guide.

Since I took most of the week off of work to go meet my nephew, I had a stack of work waiting for me when I got back. I’m surprisingly close to finishing all of it and so will be splitting work soon to go hit the batting cages. But before I go, I’ve got to give some props. I use a piece of software called Sound Soap to filter noise out of digital sound files as part of the editing process (I use the same company’s Peak for that although I can’t give it as high of marks due to compatibility issues with the Digi001 digitizing rack unit that I use). The job I’m doing at my audio station is like this: this gal interviewed a woman over the course of a few weeks using one of those microcassette recorders and its built-in microphone. Then she sends me the little tapes and I capture the audio, clean it up to the best of my ability, edit it down to transcriber-friendly durations, and burn them to audio CD. Right now, I’m in the “clean it up” phase and Sound Soap is working magnificently. My technique for using sound soap is to find a five second or so period in the file where nobody’s talking, then train SS on that sample so it knows what the background noise looks like that I want it to filter out. Then I play it filtered where people are talking. There’s a button in sound soap where you can listen to only the noise that is being filtered out, so I press that and turn it up or down so that I’m not removing any voice but just barely–I find the maximum amount of filtration before removing voice frequencies. So once I do this, and I’ve got the “noise only” function turned on, what I’m listening to is just the background noise that will be taken out. The sound quality of the stuff I’m working with now is so bad, that it literally sounds like a toilet constantly flushing. I think they must have taken a day trip to Niagara Falls for this interview session. Remarkably, when I turn it back to listening to the file with the noise filtered out, it sounds very good and understandable. Big props to Bias incorporated, in other words. Also, the dual-processor G4 that I’m running it on cuts the bounce-time to about 1/9th of the time the old G3 I was using would take. Pretty exciting stuff.