Anther victory for Freedom of, er, Satire? The group Aqua prevailed in a lawsuit by Matel over their song "Barbie" (Aquarium).
Like so many others I watched the State of the Union Address and must say that Bush sounded fairly coherent (although I wish I'd know the difference between "distinguished" and "fellow" citizens). There were a couple of spots that had me confused, though.
Tax Relief
"If this tax relief is good for Americans three, or five, or seven years from now, it is even better for Americans today." How true, especially for the rich Americans that benefit from it the most. He could have mentioned the corollary that if deficit spending is bad for Americans today, a huge deficit three, or five, or seven years from now is going to be even worse for Americans. But by then he'll be gone and future administrations will have to worry about that (kind of like the deficit we now have in Texas).
What about Osama?
So far we've gotten "the chief of al Qaeda operations in the Persian Gulf [...]; an al Qaeda operations chief from Southeast Asia; a former director of al Qaeda's training camps in Afghanistan; a key al Qaeda operative in Europe; a major al Qaeda leader in Yemen". No mention of Osama "Dead or Alive" Bin Laden. Oh well, thank go that "more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries" - I wonder if this includes those in the US who happened to have an Arabic name and who'd been stuck in prisons without access to counsel?
New-kew-lar Menace
"[Saddam] could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own." This got me scared, but I was relieved to hear that "this year, for the first time, we are beginning to field a defense to protect this nation against ballistic missiles." So we should be OK since you know those terrorists are just itching to unleash those ballistic missiles at us, like they did in New York and DC.
Power and Domination
"Now, in this century, the ideology of power and domination has appeared again..." This does not refer to the "Preemptive Strike Doctrine" but rather to "outlaw regimes that seek and possess nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons." The "inlaw" regimes are OK, I guess.
To sum it up: Taxes are bad and dividends are good, we're great for the environment (when those hydrogen cars get rolling in 15 years), and there will be freedom, democracy and happiness in Iraq as soon as we're done bombing the shit out of them.
Well, as long as I don't come from Redmond, I guess it's OK.
What is UP with all the spam for printer supplies? Is there really such a big market that warants me getting half a dozen emails a day? I can understand get-rich-fast spam, and porn spam but why oh why printer supplies?
Cecily congratulated me today on my BlogTree.com site being a finalist in the 2003 Bloggies Awards - in the "best meme" category! I think it's pretty neat and can't wait to have to keep the groupies away with a broom stick. So please, get yourself over to 2003.bloggies.com and vote for BlogTree.com and help me score fame, glory and some free movie tickets.
Now I wish I had put some effort into the site to clean it up and make it look all nice and professional-like.
I can't believe we just spent the last hour watching Joe Millionaire. Reality shows are stupid yet so insidiously addictive. Total brain rot, really. Still, it would be nice to have $50 million - for real, of course.
Wow! That's about all I can say after seeing the opera tonight. Great play, greate music, very well done. If you get the chance, see this gem - there still might be tickets available for Saturday's show. Interestingly enough, I saw Mark Fiore's Alive & Well cartoon just before heading out to pick up Jennifer for the show.
I must say that we have been very much impressed with the contemporary American operas that we've seen here in Austin (Streetcar and now this one).
I found out this afternoon that today I've been married for a hundred days. Jennifer keeps track of these things via the counter on our wedding web site. Today she surprised me by picking me up at work after lunch so we could spend the afternoon together playing hooky.
Frankly, it feels like we've been married for a much longer time than a hundred days - in a good way, mind you. Still, aniversaries are fun, especially when they come as a surprise and I'm not involved in planning for them. I'll try to pick another random round number of days (250 or 500 or 666 or something) and do something in the future.
So what did we end up doing? We took Homer for a nice walk in the park and then went out to the movies to see Drumline - she's quite the romantic one!
This morning finally the owner (I assume) of the dog called to ask about him. I told her to check with the Animal Center, so hopefully Rocky's going back home soon. We'll call the center next week to make sure everything turned out OK.
I forgot to ask what Rocky's real name is.
Before lunch, I got another call about Rocky. A lady found him in another park and, since she has three other dogs, including one in heat, wondered what I wanted to do about him. I figured he had had his three strikes, so I picked him up at her place and drove him to the Town Lake Animal Center.
As I dropped him off, they told me their policy is to wait at least three days for animals to be claimed, after which they decide whether to put them up for adoption. If they're not adoptable and if a rescue group does not take them, it's off to doggy heaven.
Driving back to work, I listened to John Aielli talk with composer Jake Heggie about the Dead Man Walking opera which is opening this Friday. Talk about feeling guilty - I had visions of the dog on death row. It's really not as bad, judging from their website, they keep the dogs for quite some time, but still...
It's weird how responsible you feel for a stray you accidentally pick up at the park (twice) to keep him from getting run over by some car. If you're thinking about getting a dog, please check out inmate A291822 at the TLAC.
