well i have not done a very good job of keeping up with this for the past 10 days or so... but i've been busy! now i am back. and i won't even try to address everything that's gone on in the world since my last post....

• i love christmas and am thrilled that it's so near. in fact, my work radio is now perma-set to christmas music. so how come everybody can't get into that spirit? some people in a suburb of denver are causing a fuss because a lady has a peace sign shaped wreath up outside her house. some say it is anti-war and offensive because they have loved ones in iraq, some say it is a satanic symbol. what? for real, people? as far as i know "peace on earth" has been part of the christmas sentiment for a long ass time. why all of the sudden is peace about a political statement or a satanic statement? good grief. i say let there be peace in that damn neighborhood and leave the woman's wreath alone!
  
• five new york city police officers fired more than 50 rounds on 3 unarmed men, killing one man who was getting married later that day, early saturday morning. there are lots of details to this story, and i'm sure we don't know everything, and i would sincerely hope that the guys were doing something very suspicious for this to happen, but 50 rounds? that is absolutely out of control. one officer was responsible for 31 of those shots--he emptied two full magazines. what? the officers were in the strip club where the guy was having his bachelor party doing an undercover investigation of suspected prostitution and drug use. well, i guess there was some kind of scuffle outside involving the groom, and one of his friends allegedly made reference to a gun. so one of the undercover officers followed the guys to their car, and then when he walked in front of the car, the groom drove into him and a parked undercover cop car. again, i know i don't know all the details, and luckily i'm not a man or someone who would get in an argument outside a strip club, but if i were, and some man dressed in plain clothes was following me to my car then came around the front of the car, i'd probably try to run his ass over too! this is what i suspect happened, then the cops decided they'd just shoot their guns some. a lot, actually. anyway, it's incredibly tragic and unnecessary. i hope these officers are punished appropriately and not let off the hook like other NYC cops have been for senseless and excessive shootings that resulted in murder.
• oh nice, i hadn't even read this yet when i went on that rant up there, but in atlanta, police killed a freaking 88-year-old woman the other day! they were entering her house under a "no-knock" drug raid because they said an informant had purchased 2 bags of crack there earlier in the day. so the officers pulled off the bars from her door and started knocking it down and the little old lady started shooting at them since she lives in a high crime neighborhood, and they fired back and killed her. nice. even if someone in her house was selling drugs (which, the informant says he did not buy drugs there), you can't just bust in an old lady's house in a high crime neighborhood and not expect her to shoot at you. arg.
  
• pamela anderson and kid rock are getting divorced. note to famous people: just give it up. stop getting married. it doesn't last.

• haha! i thought our president had gotten past saying the iraq war was at all related to al qaeda (and therefore the 9/11 attacks), but i guess he ain't giving up yet! he now says the sectarian violence in iraq is because of an al-qaeda plot. yeah, that or the fact that there are some iraqis who are PISSED that we're there and they are DIVIDED and they're basically at civil war... whichever. "He said recent strife in Lebanon and the heated up Israeli-Palestinian dispute are, like Iraq, the result of extremists trying to choke democratic progress. 'When you see a young democracy beginning to emerge in the Middle East, the extremists try to defeat its emergence' Bush said." I love how our president can generalize the world so much... "the extremists." he annoys me. i don't want to talk about him anymore.
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a guy has restored the house in the movie "a christmas story!" how exciting! anyone want to go to cleveland to see the house from the greatest christmas movie ever? (next to a charlie brown christmas, that is...) speaking of "a christmas story," i do not like the new cell phone commercial that spoofs the movie. blasphemy.