words, words, words

My heartfelt regret to the family of David Kelly.

I hope, for everyone’s sake, that justice is served.

A blog entry about the DMV?

Though I am risking a poetic fallacy by writing a boring entry about a boring subject, I went to the Department of Motor Vehicles today.

It was a success!

The best part is: I did everything I needed to do in about 5 minutes. I think it may have been a personal best. I am not going to have to report to the world that the DMV is attempting to buy uranium from Africa.

I think I am going to re-name my blog “The Doomsday Book”.

Only because I like the name. Plus, it was written by a William, as well.

I just received an email that one of my posts has stirred some lovely Dutch people to have a rally for children’s rights in Cambodia. Apparently I struck a chord with some people who were as appalled as I was. I’ll put up the details soon — the rough details are that there will be three rallies, in Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Maastricht. Probably around May/June 2004. Hopefully, I can also fly to Holland and take part.

And in financial news…

Yesterday, in the Washington Post, I read a pretty interesting article. It basically said that there was going to be a pretty big run-up in the stock market — but the article had some other interesting information as well.

It said that this spike would be caused by the low interest rates. The reason for this is the following: corporations would re-finance their loans and that would positively affect their balance sheets, regular citizens were re-financing their home loans and were spending the extra money they would save every month and lastly, it just doesn’t pay to have your money in a bank with such crappy interest rates so people are duping it into mutual funds.

This all sounds good, but … what happens afterward? The economy will begin to shrink again. The trade deficit is too high and Americans will be living above their means. People aren’t saving enough money. So in a couple years, things will be as bad as they were a few months ago. Or worse.

I think when Osama bin Laden said that he had broken the back of America, he may have been right. Not necessarily of the people, but of the economy. It was incredible timing and the country may not recover. This could be the decline of the empire.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying this is a good thing. I leave judgments to individuals. I just think it is interesting. I would hate to be deemed “un-American” in these “interesting” times. Our civil liberties are disappearing faster than ever. We are becoming a police state. A totalitarian utopia, and you better love it or leave it. So I’m not saying anything.

However, if Bush gets re-elected, I think it would be disastrous for the economy. He is talking out of both sides of his mouth, saying we need free trade and then slapping the global marketplace with tariffs.

I just hope that nobody really does try to buy uranium to make nuclear weapons. He is so busy making up stories that he might miss the real ones.

Oil.

Always be closing.

Here is what I want to do.

I want to set it up so that I can charge people five cents a minute to call me, then I can chat with telemarketers about the weather. When there is a pre-recorded message, I could just leave the phone off the hook. Maybe I could even write software that would then play the sound of someon pressing “1″ on the keypad every 30 seconds. Hmnm…

Went into D.C. for dinner with a friend from Jakarta. We had a meal at Baja Fresh and then got some ice cream. Baja Fresh was pretty good, not as good as the Mexican in Baja, but not bad. The ice cream was good. But the service was pretty bad. I hate places where they encourage the workers to be spunky. I find it annoying. Just let me pay for my crap and get out of there, don’t dazzle me with you scintillating personality.

California Tortilla is another place like that. “One burrito, no spunk.”

Of course we ate in Dupont Circle, which is one of the spunkier parts of D.C.

I did notice though, that as soon as I got back to the states people started talking a lot. The flight on JetBlue was filled with people making small talk, although it seemed like they were just patiently listening to people while they waited for their turn to talk.

blah blah blah

4th of July

Woo! Explosions!

Today I started downloading music from the Apple iTunes Music Store which has been really cool. I like it because you can download individual songs and not just the entire albums. And for a dollar, it beats having to fight the attorney when they sue eveyone in the world. I got that song “Sorry Sorry” by Femi Kuti, which had been stuck in my head for about a week; ever since Seamus played Fela Kuti for me. I need to buy one of his albums, too. Fela was a Nigerian musician who was also a big political activist. He also played in his underpants, married 27 of his dancers at once on stage, and died of AIDS. He fought corruption in government all his life. Femi is his son.

3rd of July.

Here we are, waiting with bated breath for another celebration of the Day of Independence in the U.S. This is my first one in the states for a while. So we have bumped our terrorist threat level up to Code Orange. Last night there were cops in the Metro in D.C., standing around looking scary, but not doing much. There was a homeless man who was playing with an alarm clock, which looked like he was making a bomb, a la pink panter. He was even sitting next to a large suspicous looking package. But the cops weren’t even paying attention.