Anyone who has watched any major cable news network or listened to talk radio in the last two days has most likely been inundated with one question: who will Obama’s veep pick be?

Well, apparently someone’s let the cat out of the bag (or maybe the AP ripped it out themselves), and the latest Drudge headline says it’s Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware. Here’s the entire AP article, via Breitbart.com: (more…)

I am sure that many of you have noticed that I have not been posting very much of late. That has been due to the fact that I finally landed a job (occupation: barista), and I’ve been working a ton. Unfortunately, there haven’t been very many new posts for you all to read, and we can’t have that happen, now can we? Henceforth, I shall now introduce to you the newest, and first, contributor (aside from myself) to this blog: my very own sister, Georgie. I look forward to her sharp, frank insight on politics, pop culture, education, and whatever else may be on her busy high-school mind, and I hope you will, too.

She has her own blog as well, and you can view that here: The Line-Mover.

Without further ado, let’s give a hearty internet welcome to Georgie.

Thanks much,
Cydney

So I forgot to post a “Remember to vote!” post, or rather, I didn’t have time thanks to the fact that I’m working like a dog (”Would you like whipped cream on that?”).

This morning I drug myself out of bed, limb by tired limb, at about 7:10–an amazing feat for someone used to the freedom of summer sleep-ins and closing shifts. I had to stop by the two houses I’ve been housesitting on the way to work, and I also I voted at my local polling place, which is located at the local United Church of Christ–all before heading to work a shift for someone else. Because I had helped my dad with some research on good judicial picks last night as he and my mom were filling out their absentees, it took me about thirty seconds total to completely fill out my ballot. I dropped it in the drop-box, grabbed my hard-earned piece of salt-water taffy, and I nearly forgot my “I Voted” sticker until one of the poll-workers told me not to forget one, which I slapped on my collar and wore proudly throughout the day at work, hopefully the sticker was a casual reminder to someone to vote.

You can view statewide results here.

If you forgot to vote this time, or you’re not registered to vote and you are legally able to, PLEASE make sure you register and/or vote in the general election, on November 4th.

-Cydney

I don’t know what it is, but every time I come here to write something that was just on my mind, or barely on the tip of my tongue, I either forget what it was that I wanted to communicate with my small readership, or I freeze, afraid that I can’t correctly communicate what I want to write. Or I suddenly lose all my energy, too lazy to find links, quotes, and pictures, too weary to reword an awkward sentence, an unruly paragraph.

My mind can’t comprehend why this is happening to me. Why do I go through spurts of writing like a madwoman, passionate, articulate, contemplative. And then suddenly. I’m a ghost, my fingers brush the keyboard, but my screen remains blank. Even at this very moment, the only way I can possibly write this post is because I’ve closed my eyes…literally, I’m physically closing my eyes, because if I look at what I’m writing, it slows me up, and it inhibits my thoughts, my emotions….what I am trying to convey. I get caught up in the verbage, my tone of voice, my grammar, my punctuation. Perfection slows me down. The longer I have shrunk back from writing…anything, a post, a journal entry, a letter…the worse it gets, the more confidence I lose in my writing and I forget my passion. There are so many things I want to say, but sometimes I am held up by what others may think of me and my opinion–I need to remind myself that my opinion is exactly that: my opinion. If someone disagrees, who cares?

On a side note, why the heck did anyone think it was a good idea to hold the Olympic Games in China, let alone in Beijing? Can you say, “Doh!”? I mean, I can understand maybe something slightly less aerobic, like a chess tournament, or a spelling bee (?), but come on…running, huffing, puffing, panting…in toxic smog thick as pea soup? Not to mention in a communist country…but that’s another story.

Another side note. I’m sick of hearing about Barack Obama. Okay, okay…so he’s the liberal media’s darling. He’s great in front of a teleprompter, you listen to him, and your knees start to give, you get a little chill up your spine, and your heart starts racing. He’s a rock star. You hear is voice and drool uncontrollably. You forget your own thoughts, and next you’re chanting “Yes, we can!” Ah, but you’re not at a rally…you’re watching Hardball with Chris Matthews, eating half-warmed leftover Mexican food out of a Styrofoam to-go box on your well-worn leather sofa. Oh, wait…maybe it wasn’t you drooling, that was Matthews. ‘My bad. Oh, but darling, my darling, can’t you see? Obama is another politician…of rock star proportions. I’m done. Move on. There’s got to be something else to report on. There’s just GOT to be…

Last side note. Go see Swing Vote. Yeah, that one with Kevin Costner, George Lopez, et al. I just saw it this evening, not knowing what to expect, leaving the theatre pleasantly surprised. I’m not going to give anything away just yet. Just go see it. This weekend. Yes, you. Do it.

And this concludes this session of mindless rambling. Tune in next time…

-Cydney

I am so slow at getting stuff up. Either that, or I’m too lazy. So here are some pictures I promised almost two months ago:

You can view the rest of the album here: Dino Rossi Campaign - Gig Harbor Parade

-Cydney

So, in my daily checking of Drudge Report, I was saddened to see this link: TONY SNOW DEAD AT 53…. Gosh, two brilliant American communication icons dead within a month of each other. First Tim Russert, and now my favorite White House press secretary, both dead.

I used to love listening to Tony Snow on the radio before he became press secretary. I loved his soothing voice and sense of humor. Losing him from radio was bad enough, but now he’s gone from our world. He will be missed…

-Cydney

Yes, today is Independence Day, and it reminds me of the blood, sweat, and brains of our Founding Fathers and other revolutionaries who were passionate enough about their independence and about the future of this nation’s independence.

Let’s be sure to remember the true reason for this holiday, even though I know fireworks are awesome, beer is fun, and barbecuing is all you look forward to, please remember today why you CAN blow up colorful stuff, drink alcohol, and char some beef (not to mention the freedom of religion, freedom to keep and bear arms, so on and so forth…): the battle has already been fought for us. There were many different factors that ultimately led up to the American Revolution, but this quote could sum it up:

“Taxation without representation is tyranny.”
    -James Otis

Such a simple quote, and yet truth drips from it. Remember that quote every time you go to the ballot box, faced with yet another piece of legislation or taxation that relinquishes even a bit of your freedom. Taxes. How simple. How easily established. How inflammatory if misused.

Remember. Please.

If we forget our nation’s origins, if we refuse to consider the past and learn from it, we will lose our freedom and liberty, and we will have to die to gain it back.

-Cydney

And it’s been settled.

Lame.

Not only are there way too many syllables in “Oklahoma City Sonics”, but the “O.K. City Sonics” doesn’t sound very flattering either. Oh well, apparently part of the settlement required (aside from the $45 mil that goes to the City of Seattle) means that that the Sonics’ name and their history will remain behind as the team moves on to Oklahoma City.

I’ve never been a big fan of basketball…ever, but I still find it kind of sad to see such a well-loved team (I can bet you anything my cousin is crying at the news) leave the Emerald City. I just have to put myself in the shoes of a Sonic fan and imagine the Mariners leaving us (God forbid!), even if they are the worst team in Major League Baseball–that would be lamer than lame. In fact, it’s so lame, I think it would definitely deserve a spot on Almost Live!’s Lame List:

-Cydney

I’m sure many of you have seen this clever picture or ones like it. Every time I go to fill up, I tend to glance around at the other people pumping their tanks full of liquid gold and I usually see a lot of faces that look like they could be poster children for depression commercials, and I’m sure I look a lot like it too:

    Yep, it stinks.

    Arm: I just filled up yesterday at $4.33 for regular unleaded.
    Leg: There’s NOTHING in this area below $4.30 a gallon (Arco doesn’t count–it’s like water).
    Firstborn: My dad spends around $150 every other day to fill up his big diesel work truck. The closest gas station to home (the one we all avoid) is at $4.53 a gallon for regular unleaded. Uff-da!

Anyone else with any cheery gasoline-pump stories? Leave a comment.

-Cydney

Please excuse me for the obvious lack of blogging lately. I do have other priorities in my life, and I haven’t been on the computer much lately. It’s part of being healthy.

This last Saturday, Yours Truly had the privilege of shaking hands and getting a picture with Washington State’s next governor, Dino Rossi. He was very easy going, and he was very appreciative of all the people around here that have been volunteering for him. I had my younger sisters with me, too, and he thanked them for coming as well.

Pictures to come.

-Cydney

…to say the least. A 19-year-old University of Oklahoma freshman was just elected mayor of Muskogee, a town of nearly 40,000 people in Oklahoma. Here’s the AP article:

MUSKOGEE, Okla. (AP) — A 19-year-old freshman at the University of Oklahoma was elected mayor Tuesday of Muskogee, a city of 38,000 in the northeastern part of the state.

With all precincts reporting, John Tyler Hammons won with 70 percent of the vote over former Mayor Hershel Ray McBride, said Muskogee County Election Board Secretary Bill Bull.

“The public placing their trust in me is the greatest, humbling and most awesome experience I’ve ever had in my life,” said Hammons, who is from Muskogee but attends the university in Norman.

The two candidates squared off in a runoff election for the nonpartisan post after neither secured 50 percent of the vote in a six-person election April 1.

Hammons, who will be sworn in next week, said he plans to continue his college education but expects to transfer to a school closer to Muskogee.

“Being elected does not change my desire to continue my education,” he said. “We will schedule our time in an appropriate fashion so that I can be mayor and stay in school.”

Hammons replaces Wren Stratton, who decided not to seek re-election after one term.

The mayor leads the nine-member city council and serves as a voting member. Hammons said a key to his platform that resonated with voters was openness of government and keeping citizens better informed of city operations.

“I think that’s been a detriment to the trust of the citizens of Muskogee,” he said. “Once we have that trust, we can solve any other problem.”

The kid has got that right. I can guarantee you that most people put very little trust in their government, even their local government. Why? Because people don’t involve themselves. It’s like deism but in the form of politics. You elect whichever politician looks best in a suit and promises to give you candy, and then you stand back and let them wreak havoc. I say “kudos” to Mr. Hammons for taking the initiative and getting involved, even if he isn’t even old enough to drink.

-Cydney

Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity. 1 Timothy 4:12 NIV

Yeah, yeah, I haven’t posted in a while. This last week and a half has been…interesting. I’ve been adjusting to life back home, trying to keep my sanity, looking for a job, etc. But that’s not what this post is about. So let me just rant a while about some things that are irritating me at the moment:

1. The Democratic primary. Can it just be over? At this point I don’t even care who the nominee is, I don’t care who wins in November (life WILL go on, my friends!), and I’m about ready to scream at Rush Limbaugh through the radio if he mentions “Operation Chaos” one more time. I. Will. Scream. For Pete’s sake, let the democrats nominate whomever they choose, be it Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama…I don’t care. Why don’t I care? Because McCain is just “blah” to me, and I don’t care if he beats Hillary or Obama, or if either of them beat McCain. Life will go on. It’s not a monarchy (thank God!). Every time I turn on the news it’s another conversation between professional “political analysts” about democratic super delegates, and I think if there’s another newscast on that ridiculous primary again, I’ll shoot myself.

2. Ice cream. My family and I have recently discovered that some brands of ice cream are shrinking the size of their “half gallons”, formerly at an actual 1.75 quarts down to a stubby 1.50 quarts. And guess what? You’re paying the same price (or in some cases, more) for less ice cream. At our local rural mini-mart/gas station, we paid $6.49 per “half gallon”. I guess this is the big ice cream corporations’ response to high oil prices, which happened to pass $120 per barrel today, which leads me to my next point of irritation…

3. Gas prices. My goodness. I shelled (at a Shell station…haha…punny) out $3.86 a gallon the other day at above mentioned gas station. While I was standing at the pump, about to insert my check card, I asked out loud, “So what’s it going to be today? An arm, or a leg?” I honestly hope someone got a secret chuckle out of that, even though gas prices these days are anything but funny.

4. Road construction. Yeah, yeah, I know it’ll be great when that one road is all freshly widened, paved, and painted, and traffic will ease up, too…blah, blah, blah. All I know is that it’s making me LATE or nearly late to anywhere I go, and it irritates me. Yeah, I know it’s my “nickel at work”, but hey…maybe I’d rather watch my nickel (or rather half my wallet) work at NIGHT or at non-rush hour periods, thankyouverymuch.

5. Prime-time TV writers. Can they please stop ruining my favorite shows? Despite what television writers may think, most people DON’T want to watch another hour-long show revolving around sex as well as hear half a dozen sex jokes within the span of twenty minutes. It’s awkward, and it’s irritating. Have they run out of ideas, or what?

Ok. I think I’m done. If you have a rant, feel free to post it in the comments.

-Cydney

Not much is family friendly anymore these days. Trying to browse for a clean flick at the local Blockbuster or Hollywood Video is nearly impossible without coming across atrocious covers and inappropriate titles. Watching baseball with your kids without having to mute or change the channel is nearly impossible because of the trashy commercials using sex as an advertising hook.

But your local grocery store is looking out for you and your family…meet the “Family Friendly” check-out line. I’m sure you’ve seen them, they look exactly the same as all the other check-out stations, except for the noticeable sign plastered above the magazine stand advertising that particular check-out’s family friendliness. I have seen those signs before, but as I was walking through a certain grocery store this evening, I thought a little bit more about the subject. What I’m trying to understand is why exactly these check-out stands are apparently “family friendly”, and I also wondered if maybe the other check-out stands were unfamily friendly. Is it that the clerks in the “family friendly” lines are less easily irritated by screaming children? Or maybe the aisle is just slightly wider so as to make room for little kids clinging to the sides of the cart so they don’t knock down all the Snickers bars while going through? Or perhaps it’s specifically for people with ginormous shopping lists (because if you’re buying a ton of groceries, you MUST have a family…or something) so that the “others” (with bachelor-sized grocery lists) don’t have to wait around and twiddle their thumbs.

I may have my speculations, but I must say that I doubt those particular check-out stands are family friendly because they have less raunchy magazines covers to glance at casually as you and your children unload your family-sized peanut butter, your family-sized bag of generic Cheerios, and your family-sized shampoo from your cart to your conveyor belt. Nope…Doubt it.

-Cydney

Looks like South Puget Sound commuters get to shell out a dollar more every time they cross the new Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Whoopee! Those of us with Good-to-Go Passes (a.k.a. “the mark of the beast”) get to pay $2.75 every time we flash our pearly whites underneath the lights and cameras on our way to T-Town. Those who instead choose to wait in line at the toll booths get to pay $4.00 beginning on July 1st of this year. Dang, I just LOVE coughing up cash to the government!

-Cydney

Can anyone tell me what those orange/pinkish “things” are?

Birds, planes, …oh, they’re kissing herons??

Apparently so:

That’s the vision of Mike Ross, the public-art sculptor for Sound Transit’s future underground station at Capitol Hill. His steel birds, one facing north and one facing south, would appear to kiss each other. They would lurk among huge crossbeams, over the train platforms. “Because I started with such aggressive symbols, I arranged them in a nonaggressive way,” he said Thursday. A New Yorker, he was inspired by Seattle’s natural setting and aviation history, but wanted bright colors to offset the region’s perpetually gray skies.

This massive sculpture, my friends, is what your hard earned tax dollars is going toward within the latest, most awesomely expensive Sound Transit subway project. The cost of this fine, fine art? Oh, just half a million…

The $550,000 sculpture at the station, near Broadway at John Street, would be part of a three-mile, $1.8 billion subway from downtown to Husky Stadium, to open in late 2016.

As for aesthetics, the article says this:

The Seattle sculpture would explore the relationship between nature and technology, war and peace, strength and fragility. “It asks a lot of people,” he said. Ross said he hopes children will enjoy the playful shape.

SayWA? “It asks a lot of people”… By golly, it does! It asks that they continue to fork over their tax dollars and be reminded of it every time they pass a hideous half-million dollar sculpture. As for the children, I can see it now: Little Billy tugs on his mom’s business suit and queries, “Mommy? What IS that big…thing?” Meanwhile, Little Sally is hiding behind the stroller in fright.

Hey, it’s almost like it could be Seattle’s own version of ‘Nessie!

-Cydney

H/T: Orbusmax

…since I last posted. I’ve got one coming later this afternoon. Just hold your horses. I’ve been quite busy, back and forth, yada yada…

-Cydney

So now the Associated Press is reporting that Saddam Hussein most likely secretly paid for Jim McDermott’s–and two other U.S. congressmen’s–Iraq trip way back in October of 2002. How does this NOT surprise me? But what I don’t understand is why Saddam would have any purpose in bringing over some anti-war congressmen for a little complimentary tour. Oh, look…the answer is right here, in the article:

During the trip, the lawmakers expressed skepticism about the Bush administration’s claims that Saddam was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.

“War is not the answer,” Bonior, who is no longer in Congress, said at a news conference while on the trip. “There is a way to resolve this.”

Though weapons of mass destruction ultimately were never found, the lawmakers drew criticism for their trip at the time.

Oklahoma Sen. Don Nickles, the second-ranking Senate Republican at the time, said the Democrats “sound somewhat like spokespersons for the Iraqi government.”

That makes sense. Too bad it didn’t really work. I don’t know about you, but Saddam never really seemed like a guy who would shirk away from a fight–unless of course he really did have weapons of mass destruction that he still needed time to bury properly. Of course, McDermott might disagree with the claim that he and the other two were pretty much spokespersons for Saddam:

“Obviously we didn’t know it at the time,” McDermott spokesman Michael DeCesare said Wednesday. “The trip was to see the plight of the Iraqi children. That’s the only reason we went.”

Riiiight. Ya know, I’ll give McDermott the benefit of the doubt on this one, but it still doesn’t make it right after the fact. I’m thinking this could be some good news for McDermott’s challenger and ex-anti-war activist, Steve Beren, although personally, I don’t think Beren even needs this kind of fodder against McDermott to win.

-Cydney

…Not recently, mind you, but check out this video five-year-old video from March 6, 2003:

Hopefully you made it through Hymn #321 of the Code Pink Peace Sing-A-Long Book without ripping your hair out by its roots. If you made it through the whole video, you can also enjoy the beginnings of Code Pink Chant #4, found toward the back of the book.

Back to substance…Of course Senator Clinton is whistling a different tune now. Yeah, she still found a chance to bash President Bush in her speech, but overall, she sounded much like a defense conservative. I just finished picking my jaw up off the floor, actually. Now, this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise as she IS a Clinton, and if I know anything about the Clintons, it’s that they have a habit of catering to popular public opinion polls–as obviously evidenced by her pretty unabashed support of the War in Iraq in the very beginning to her current pledge to begin bringing all troops home within the first 60 days of her [God forbid] presidency.

As much as I dislike Obama, at least the dude is consistent, even if he is consistently liberal.

Today, March 21st, 2008 marks a day of celebration or remembrance in general for about half the people around the world for some reason or another. Today is special for you today if you celebrate one of the following holidays:


-Good Friday, if you’re a Christian or a Catholic

-Vernal Equinox, if you’re a hippie

-Holi, if your Hindu

-Bahá’í Naw-Rúz, if you’re Muslim or…Bahá’í

-Benito Juarez Day, if your Mexican


Maybe those politically correct holiday catch phrases were meant for today and not for the December holiday season. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I ever remember a time when Kwaanza, Christmas, and Hanukkah all fell on the same day.

-Cydney

Headlining on The Drudge Report:

Apparently the new governor of New York, David Paterson, has some scandal of his own (as does his wife), albeit he confessed it himself and didn’t use government money to pay for his infidelity: (more…)