No.

No.

For the love of all that is good and just in the world, please god NO Paris Hilton in D&D 2! The first one was bad enough!

UC Irvine

It happened last night. I was determined to stay up all night, because I knew that I was unprepared for the physics final. I needed to study, study hard, and get the equations into my head. It worked, I did well on the final, but that's another story.

However, at about 1 am, my head was packed. I had been going over the midterm solutions to make sure I could do those problems again. I knew that I needed some supplies in order to make it through the night, awake, and mostly alert.

Now, near the UCI bookstore, there's Cornerstone Café. Now, normally they close at around 10-10:30. However, they realized that college students rarely sleep at standard intervals during finals (right now I'm sort of on a 4 - 11 pm sleep schedule...), so they stay open ALL THE TIME during finals week. And they sell frappachinos and energy drinks.

All that caffine can NOT be good for my heart :).

So I get up, and walk over there. Its about ten minutes, and those were possibly the most blissful ten minutes I've spend in the last few days.

First off, Middle Earth is designed to look like civilzation grew out of the forest, not that they built the buildings and then planted trees here and there. No cars, no loud noises, nothing but trees and lights. And also, against all odds, there was a light drizzle going on. Lighter than a light drizzle, actually. Mist that doesn't obscure sight.

And its quiet. No sounds of far-off cars roaring down the road. No weird night-owls playing loud music non-stop. None of the static, constant noise of a hundred conversations, overlapping, canceling themselves out to just create a lot of white noise.

Nothing.

And I walked there, happy and content, knowing that in about 12 hours I was going to be nervous and afraid, but I didn't care.

Its something I've rarely experienced. Even back at home, there's a major street only a few blocks over, and nature is confined, not looking like it grows where it will.

Its... nice. Its something I'm going to miss.

And its a memory I'm going to cherish for a long time.

Be Like That (American Pie Edit) by 3 Doors Down
"If i could be like that
i would give anything
just to live one day
in those shoes."

I'll be glad to get away from the books, from the tests, from the ten page papers for thirteen weeks.

But I'll still miss the nights.

The most racist, bigoted, hateful essay I've ever read...

A true piece of crap.

Perhaps the most descriptive quote I can find from it:

"Since the only book they read is the Koran, it's more than likely that they have no knowledge of Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Let's give them a refresher course."

...

*cough*

Called it...

Just read Bush's Eulogy on Reagan, and, well, its what I predicted.

All of the good, none of the bad, and a bit more than was warranted.

*sigh*

The other Bush's eulogy was much better, more personal for obvious reasons, and, well, better in pretty much all respects.

Would be intresting to hear Clinton's remarks, though. Just a thought...

Bush and Kerry are RELATED!!!!!

Proof that Bush and Kerry are RELATED!

OMG!!!!!1!!!one!!!eleven!!!!!

My thoughts on Reagan

Taken from the Introduction to my copy of "Speaker for the Dead":

---

"I thought that a more appropriate funeral would be to say, honestly, what that person was and what that person did. But to me, 'honesty' doesn't simply mean saying all the unpleasant things instead of saying only the nice ones. It doesn't even consist of averaging them out. No, to understand wh a person really was, what his or her life really meant, the speaker for the dead would have to explain their self-story - what they meant to do, what they actually did, what they regretted, what they rejoiced in. That's the story that we never know, the story that we never can know - and yet, at the time of death, it's the only story worth telling."

---

I realize that people want to think of Reagan as one of the greatest presidents of all time. Personally, I hold him in the "pretty darn good" level, below Lincoln and Washington, but above the "good" presidents, like Truman and Ford. He had quite a few good things to his name, like speeding up the destruction of the Soviet Union, which was dying anyway thanks to their own economic system. Essentially, Communism is the main reason why Communism died in Russia, Reagan just took advantage of the USSR's economic flaws.

However, he did ignore AIDS, there were a few scandals to his name, and so on.

So it troubles me when people keep saying that he was the greatest president of the modern era. It bothers me more when I see that GW Bush is one of many republicans giving a eulogy, while no Democrats were invited. And I think that his speech at the funeral will be something akin to these remarks.

And it just seems wrong for someone to ignore all the fault a person had, to give him more credit than he is actually due.

Reagan was a man. Yes, he was a pretty darn good president, an excellent actor (which tends to go hand in hand with being a politician), and for the most part a good person. But he was still a man. He still made mistakes. To ignore those mistakes is to ignore who the man really was.

I hope someone besides us left-wing nuts realize this...

Okay, this is clever...

We're sorry our president is an idiot...

Good laughs aplenty :).

Compare and Contrast Presidential Candidates...

Reagan's death is a big thing right now. Besides allowing TV News to fill up the slow news days, its really touched the hearts of everyone, especailly everyone who was ALIVE when he was president.

I think I was 3 when he left office...

But only a fool would expect the two major political parties to ignore it. Why would they?

In a sense, this is a good oppurtunity to test the candidate's morals. Are they going to be respectful or are they going to exploit it to the best of their abilities?

Or both at the same time?

Well, Kerry has decided to stop campaigning this week in honor of Reagan, and his website is relatively unchanged, with only a press release regarding the death.

Meanwhile, Bush is changing an advertisement released this week that would viciously go after Kerry, and instead use one that is mostly about Bush's economic policy with only "slight" jabs at Kerry.

And then you see the website...

*cough*

Amazing what you find on Infoceptor...

Hehehe...

The New Rumor Mill

An intresting article on how the whole "Kerry intern scandal" story/rumor evolved, written by the Intern herself.

An intresting read, to be sure.