I want to be able to secrete salt from my eyes like a sea turtle.

You see, when most people think of animal abilities that they want, they stop with the obvious things like flying and retractable claws. But what about tunnelling like a mole? What about turning your digestive tract inside out like a starfish? What about spontaneously changing genders like certain species of frog?

I would think the sea turtle thing would come in handy. For example, last night I was eating a free leftover Lynah Rink soft pretzel. It was making me really thirsty, because it was so salty and I had nothing to drink. But if I could secrete that extra salt through my eyes, I wouldn't be so thirsty.

Press Gets Twisted Up In Pretzel Logic
You know, I thought maybe September 11 had jolted the media out of their focus on stupid news. But 4 months later, they've sunk in even lower. Where's Gary Condit when you need him?

I'm not too concerned anymore that I won't be able to attend any of the events at this weekend's "Real World" program. It appears the function of the weekend is to network with alumni. They've got a wide range of people available for networking, including about 60 who hold stereotypical Colgate-grad corporate jobs, two elementary school teachers, and one guy who does graphics for magazines and newspapers. So out of all the folks they found, only one holds a job of interest to me, and I'm not actually qualified to pursue that interest, so networking with him would be useless.

Oh, and if I see one more editorial cartoon using a pretzel to symbolize some issue that Bush is "choking on" (be it Enron, the war, Tom Daschle, etc.), I'm going to ... do something.

Well, now at least we know why Congress never officially declared war on Afghanistan. If we were officially at war, then al-Qaida and Taliban members we captured would be prisoners of war. And if they were prisoners of war, we would have to give them some scrap of human rights under the Geneva Convention. And if there's one thing President Bush hates, it's an international treaty. As long as we're not at war, we can treat our prisoners of not-war (which he calls "unlawful combatants," since it's unlawful to fight someone unless they're at war with you -- convenient, no?) however we like, and if anyone complains we can just say "hey, they're the evil bad guys, they don't deserve better."

So now we've dumped the ABM treaty, refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol and the land mines treaty, and we're doing our best to get out of our obligations to the UN. Look for the Feds to revive the time-honored tradition of kicking Native Americans off their reservations sometime later this year.

Proof of what an internet geek I am:
There's a construction crew out in front of the Chapel trimming the trees. They have some signs up to warn you about it. My first thought when I saw one of the signs was "hey, that looks like one of those stupid "under construction" .gifs."

So, I'm bored enough that I'm doing some of these wacky code deals.

Blogger Code:
B3 d-- t k s+ u-- f i- o+ x+ e- l- c-

Geek Code:
GSS d- s+++:-- a-- C++ U? P U? E? W++ N? o? K? w+ O? M+ V? PS+ PE- Y PGP- t-- 5? X R !tv b+++ DI D-- G-- e>++++ h- r++(---) z?

And even though it's completely irrelevant to me as a Lutheran-turned-Unitarian, I've got time to kill, so I'll do up a Magick Code:
MO S>+++ G-- Q--- 666? y W++ C+ N+ PJC+ D0>1

Someone found this site searching for Joe Converse. I suppose I should be happy that I'm only #7, but it really disturbs me that result #6 is titled "Lovers."

Here I am, wasting a few hours so that it can hurry up and be time to go back to Colgate. I keep thinking about how I need to learn to live in the moment more, especially since I have a limited number of them left before I graduate, but I don't precisely know how to do that. And it's especially hard when the moment is so boring.

I'm giving the Zoroastrians a rest, even though it is a pretty cool religion. So now I'm just looking at blogs in the "recently updated" list. Not because I care about these people's lives. I'm barely reading anything. I'm just looking at the layouts. And I really want an explanation of why so many blogs are in Portuguese.

I watched some pretty terrible TV today. Granted, I think just about everything on TV besides the Simpsons is terrible. But today I saw the crappiest of the crap. We just saw a commercial for the "Perfect Pancake," which is essentially two frying pans hinged together opposite the handles. And there was a game show called "The Chamber," where they put a person in this chamber and make them answer questions while they're spun upside down, blasted with air, and either heated to 150 degrees, or sprayed with water and frozen to -20 degrees.

Well, I've wasted about an hour since I started typing this. In another two hours I can justify checking the Brunching board again. Maybe I should go eat something...