The online journal, notebook and playground of HFM

A flood of red ink

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I don’t know if you’ve read ever read much of The Economist, but it’s not a liberal magazine. To say the least. Which makes this article on the Bush economy really interesting reading to me.

More sober analysts are also worried. In their most recent poll, members of the National Association of Business Economists described the federal deficit as the biggest problem facing America’s economy. A bipartisan coalition of three economic think-tanks–the Committee for Economic Development, the Concord Coalition and the Centre on Budget and Policy Priorities–recently declared that, without a change in course, the next decade might be the “most fiscally irresponsible” in the country’s history.”

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Flat Stanley’s Undercover White House Sting

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After receiving top secret clearance, Flat Stanley was shown a report by White House Chief of Staff Andy Card.
Later, Flat Stanley told us that the report contained proof that the 2000 election was fixed, that Bush knew about 9/11 before it happened and let it happen so he could invade Iraq, that Bush helped Enron manipulate the California energy crisis that unseated Gray Davis, and that Bush knew there were no weapons of mass destruction, but invaded anyway to help ensure his buddies at Halliburton could get lucrative government contracts at the expense of the lives of U.S. soldiers.
A few days later Flat Stanley was discovered in the wastebasket beneath a White House paper shredder, cut to ribbons.

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Wil Wheaton and I have some of the same photos…

Wil took an eastbound trip from California to Vegas along old Route 66, and during the trip he overlapped with some of the route of my 1998 road trip with Laurie and Twyla to help them move out to Arizona. He has several photos that are the same as mine… the largest cross in the western hemisphere, the leaning water tower, the giant cowboy, and several photos in Shamrock, Texas, including one of a beautiful 50’s cafe. This is his photo, and here’s mine:

U Drop Inn Cafe

U Drop Inn Cafe, Shamrock, Texas

UPDATE: In the summer of 2007, I took a long roadtrip on Route 66.

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CBS and the Reagan Mini-series

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You might be aware that CBS caved to pressure from the right-wing and decided to cancel airing of the mini-series on the Reagans. In part, the controversy stems from the mini-series portrayal of Reagan’s handing (or more accurately, non-handling) of the AIDS crisis, which hit hard during his administration. The mini-series gets it pretty close to accurate, and that makes Reagan look really bad — appropriately so, because he was bad. And the right-wing can’t stand that their Saint Reagan might look bad, so they put the screws to the network.
So network television is controlled by the Republican party. And that scares the living shit out of me.

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New Photos

In the house section of my site, I added up to date pictures of my living room including the electric work, mudding and taping, painting the ceiling and painting the walls. Other photos I added to the house section: some photos of the flowerbeds in the front yard from various times this summer, pictures of my basement that I took a while back, more photos of the fence around Talbott Street’s parking lot. Also, a picture of my new aquarium.
Update: I ended up taking down photos of my house after someone used them to stalk me, sadly.
Sigh. I still have to put up Amy’s Birthday photos, some kick-ass pics from Halloween (featuring Mike Pullen as the Gorton’s fisherman and Dan and Doug as the Skipper and Gillian), pictures of the last Mutual Friends softball game of the season, and five days worth of photos from the “painting my house” series, and a bunch of photos of Drusilla, who actually came downstairs and explored this morning.

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Neil Gaiman

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I read my first Neil Gaiman book, Neverwhere, the other day, and I’m hopelessly addicted and can’t believe I never read any of his work before. I was really delighted to discover a link on Wil Wheaton’s blog, which I read every day, to Neil Gaiman’s blog, which I will be reading every day as well. Clever man.
Neverwhere is a science fiction book about London and has as part of it’s setting the London Tube… which is why Neil links on his site to a map of the tube stations illustrating stops that are close to one another.

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newest household members

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The cool thing about owning an automatic after years of having a manual transmission is that you can drive home from Walmart with one hand on the steering wheel and the other holding a bag full of water and four goldfish. I really intended to get just three goldfish; Ahab, Ishmael and Queequeg, but little Starbuck managed to stowaway in the fishnet along with the others and land in the plastic bag, so I ended up buying him too. I figured if he was that intent on coming home with me, I should probably adopt him. I put them in my new aquarium that I bought specifically for Kathy’s Plecostomus, who I named Moby. He’s huge in comparison to them. They have a cave rock, a tiny ship, and a statue of Neptune to swim around. Moby immediately adopted the cave rock as his new home, which is what I was hoping when I bought it.
I now own nine animals. Thank God five of them are fish.

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The House Next Door to Me

Is for sale at $29,900. [ Link redacted ]I hope that the neighborhood buys it, because if someone just buys it as an investment, they might be a crappy owner.

UPDATE: – The people who ended up buying the houses gutted it, then left it sitting for months before selling it again. Now (March, 2005) it’s owned by a really nice guy who’s got people working on it every day and it’s really shaping up.

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Spike has more friends than I do….

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The other day this little dog, Donut, on Friendster e-mailed Spike and asked to be his friend. So I clicked yes. Donut is friends with over 350 other dogs and cats on Friendster. So now Spike’s getting e-mail from lady dogs in California, coming on to him. He has more friends in his personal network (250,000+) than I do (148,827). It’s sad. But only because I haven’t figured out how to use this to get a date. For me.

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