Ahoy, mates!

So, do tell:

Where’s the best place to live in Seattle? Which are the best schools (public or private (for the children under 18))? Is it really so very rainy or is that just an urban legend?

I have reason to believe this may be in my (relatively) distant future:

http://depts.washington.edu/bioe/programs/phd/phd.html

If you didn’t know, Flickr was recently banned in China because it could be used as a forum for free expression. There is, however, a workaround. Using Firefox and an add-on anyone in China, Iran, Saudi Arabia or any other government-suppressed country can use flickr too!

There is quite a long list of content banned by China. According to GreatFirewallOfChina.org, A.bunchof.us is one of the many blogs inaccesible to the Chinese (as it damn well should be.)

So if you know anyone in China who enjoys Flickr.. you should call them and let them know.

Friends! Lycanthropes! Misfits! Children of God! I come bearing good tidings of good things that are good!

My surgery went okay — thanks for asking, K. The path report came back and they got all of the cancer. The pharmacist at my local Walgreens, upon filling a prescription for me, said, “Wow! Congrats! You’re a cancer survivor!” I told her that we prefer to be referred to as “cancer victims” and not “survivors” but I think my humor noir was lost on her. She’s just a pharmacist! Sheesh! It would be asking too much of any person to count pills all day and have a keen eye for jokes made in poor taste. Be reasonable.

Anyhow, the procedure itself was only minorly painful (ed note: I do have a freakishly high tolerance to physical pain so your mileage may very vary.) The worst part of the whole thing was that I was prohibited from doing the s-e-x word (at least in my baby cave) for three weeks post-op. This pretty much guarantees that I’ve grown a new freshness seal (hymen, in some circles.)

Anyhow, about that three weeks? If you were keeping track, you would know that it ends tonight.

So. See ya!

(p.s. just foolin’ about the YouTube tag)

Witness

As I have alluded to on a few occasions, the library where I work is in a school that serves homeless families and their children. The kids we work with have usually dealt with more trauma in their short lives than most of us can even comprehend (time spent living in shelters, parental substance problems, abusive fathers, battered mothers, language barriers, massive amounts of missed school time, lack of regular medical attention, etc, etc, etc.) Because of this, our school has trained counselor/therapists on staff to work with the kids and help them process and deal with their issues and trauma. These kids are psychologically wounded, and we jumpstart their healing process. It’s an integral part of what we do, at least as important as getting them caught up on the school time they’ve missed.

At least until now. Thanks to the federal government’s recent “reinterpretation” of the No Child Left Behind Act, we were forced to lay off one of our two full-time counselors on staff. Previously, government education funds could, in addition to traditional school expenses, materials, and teacher salaries, be used to pay other school staff such as counselors. But no more. The feds decided that funding for such “luxuries” as psychological therapy would only be allowed after the kids’ scores on standardized tests went up. And since all of our kids have, not surprisingly, missed tons of school time, their test scores are almost always below grade level.

So, to sum up: we can’t give the kids the counseling and therapy they desperately need to improve their school performance…until after their school performance improves.

President Bush and his party constantly proclaim, with great fervor and fanfare, their Christian faith. They invoke the name of God as motivation and/or justification for any number of policies. Hell, Bush even named Jesus Christ as his favorite philosopher. It’s times like this when I wonder whether or not any of these self-proclaimed Christians have ever bothered to read the words of the guy they’re so publicly chummy with.

I don’t believe in Heaven, Hell, or any kind of Afterlife. But sometimes, I really hope there is a Hell. Because if it does exist, ol’ Dubya and people like him have a nasty surprise in store when they die.

When the Do Not Call list debuted, I quickly signed up. I’m not a fan of solicitors and I think the list is a great idea. I understand that non-profit organizations are exempt from the Do Not Call list. As I occasionally donate to organizations that I think do good work, we receive many phone calls from all sorts of crazy charities. Last night though, a new strategy was employed on me. 

While I was baking cookies and enjoying football, the phone rang. Silly me got excited thinking it was a friend calling to talk about either 1) How much I hate the Steelers or 2) How awesome the Joey Porter touchdown and smooch of Bill Cowher was. Sadly, it was neither. It was a lady calling to talk about Hollywood and the decline of entertainment standards in America. She started out by saying that this call was not to ask for money. Great, I think, because at this moment, I really want to just talk to some stranger about the decline of moral values in America. Our conversation goes something like this: 

Lady: Do you agree that Hollywood has gone too far and children are put at risk by watching movies today. Me: No. 

Lady: Oh. Let me convince you otherwise. Blah, blah, blah, Hollywood controls all movies. Blah, blah, need more family values movies that are safe for children, but Hollywood throws away any script that contains family values. Blah, blah, blah. What do you think? Me: I think parents should decide what their kids can and can’t watch. 

Lady: Parents should be responsible, but there are no viable options for them. We don’t believe in censorship. We at non-profit organization X support company Y as they are pushing to make movies with proper family values. Can they call you back at a later date? Me: No. 

Lady: Even if you don’t agree, their message is important, blah, blah, blah, fund-raising, blah, blah, blah. It will only take three minutes of your time. Me: No. 

Lady: Three minutes isn’t a lot to ask. Me: No thank you. I’m not interested. Bye. (hangs up phone) 

Now, I know I could have ended the call sooner, but I am both nice and a pushover. I will hang up on a solicitor before they start talking, but once they start talking, I will listen politely for far too long. When it comes down to it, this “organization” was created to skirt around the Do Not Call list. They call and don’t ask for money, but instead ask if the other for-profit company can call you and ask for money. This is the first time this has happened to me, so I’m not sure how new the tactic is. Has it happened to you? Do you think it will become more popular? Is it ethical? It seems to be an abuse of the List, but is no doubt legal. 

Now, I’m no expert on mountain climbing manners, but it generally seems like a bad thing to pass by someone in dire straits and leave him to die.

..and I thought the worst thing about climbing Everest was repeatedly knocking over a rack of thimbles at your parents’ house.

(Go watch the classic Mr. Show sketch over on YouTube)

I encountered a bit of a moral dilemma yesterday. As I walked down to the coffee shop to get my morning cup ‘o sludge, I happened to glance down and see a folded green bill lying on the ground in the mostly empty hallway. Naturally, I stopped. I looked around a bit, and seeing no one in sight, I bent down, picked it up, stood up, and unfolded it. A one hundred dollar bill. Holy crap.

I honestly didn’t know what to do at that point — there was no one around who seemed to be looking for the lost money, and I wasn’t about to go asking random nearby individuals, “hey, you lose a benji?” So I stood there and waited. And waited some more. And then a bit more. I stood around for between 10 and 15 minutes, just to see if someone would come shuffling by looking for his lost booty, but no one materialized.

So what to do? I could have then dropped it off at the nearby coffee stand, but that seemed like a bit of a long shot. Someone might have dropped it after buying coffee, but what are the chances she would ask the coffee people, and what are the chances the coffee people would be honest? There might’ve been lost and found in my building, but again, come on.

So I kept it. Snakes on a plane. Did I do the right thing?