no one here to tell us what to do...

[brainfiber]

what up folks...

been crazy busy...well at least after vacation...gave up drinking for a month...well actually  a month and a 1/2...not a drop...finally had a beer on my birthday...it was yummy good.

Read a hellava good book..The Terror...long but worth it.

now i'm reading this book "Bugatti Queen" about this French lady in the 20's/30's who was a race car driver in Europe...plus she was a dancer and posed for some erotic photos (full frontal nudiity in the biography as an added bonus!)...then she was accused of being a Nazi after the war and her career was over...lived the rest of her life in obscurity. Helle Nice.

[Mister Chaddy]

Howdy, BF!  Glad to hear things are well.

[Mister Chaddy]

He was here.  I swear!

[Tripp]

suuuuure, Chad.

[brainfiber]

He's telling the truth.

so the kids got one of them slot car things for christmas...i was so into it that my wife and family got me a set for my birthday...only bigger cars...there like 5 inches long...things are sweet and fast...and so detailed.

what can I say I'm a geek...plus i'll never actually be able to drive one of these cars...

[attachment deleted by admin]

[matthew]

Hey, bf.


Someone calm down Chad.

[matthew]

A rookie U.S. senator, Alaska Democrat Mike Gravel burst onto the Washington scene in the early 1970s breathing fire and brimstone over U.S. involvement in a controversial war. Almost two generations later, he's back at it.

Gravel, 77, once again has unleashed his take-no-prisoners style of politicking, this time on the 2008 Democratic presidential race. In his gruff, blunt, elbow-throwing way, Gravel is railing against the war in Iraq with the same high voltage he used to condemn the one in Vietnam. And just as in the 1970s, he's getting little respect.

Gravel has raised scant money and, after making a few early appearances at candidate debates, is conducting a barely visible campaign aimed mainly at YouTube viewers and radio talk-show audiences.

"I'm being marginalized again," said Gravel in an interview. "The comparison between Vietnam (and Iraq) is uncanny. There's not an ounce of difference. And yet people don't seem to want to hear it. I think I disturb people right now."

Mike Gravel has been disturbing people for a long time.

Not long after he won a surprise election to the U.S. Senate in 1968, Gravel emerged as one of the Vietnam War's sharpest critics. Shocking the Washington establishment, he ordered top-secret government documents into the Congressional Record and led a one-man filibuster in the Senate to end the military draft.

Although Gravel already had earned a reputation as a maverick while serving in the Alaska Legislature, little in his background hinted at the spectacular tactics he'd use to advance his anti-war crusade.

Raised in Massachusetts, the son of French Canadian immigrants, Gravel (the accent is on the second syllable)  enlisted in the Army before beginning a series of eclectic jobs: He drove taxis in New York, clerked on Wall Street and worked as a brakeman on the Alaska Railroad before starting a real estate and investment business in Anchorage.

Gravel's entry into politics was rocky. His election to the Alaska House came after he lost two local elections. Then he lost a third time, bidding for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1966, before he unseated U.S. Sen. Ernest Gruening in the 1968 Democratic primary and went on to win the general election. When they rejected the anti-war Gruening, Alaska voters had little hint that Gravel would emerge as an even fiercer opponent of the war.

Little more than two years into his Senate career, Gravel made dramatic headlines when he entered into the Congressional Record the so-called "Pentagon Papers," a series of secret government reports that chronicled United States failures in Vietnam. Unable to get past procedural hurdles in the Senate, Gravel called a meeting of the Buildings and Grounds committee he chaired and ordered the documents entered into the Congressional Record.

In the same year, 1971, Gravel carried on a five-month Senate filibuster against the military draft, which ultimately played a role in its 1973 demise.

It would be years and even decades later, Gravel said, before his maverick actions would begin to earn widespread respect. In the heat of the turbulent 1970s, though, his political standing at home was always shaky. Although he won re-election in 1974, he was knocked off in the 1980 Democratic primary — ironically by the grandson of the incumbent that Gravel had derailed 12 years earlier.

"Loose cannon is a good description of Gravel's Senate career," said Stephen Haycox, a history professor at the University of Alaska-Anchorage. "He was an off-the-wall guy, and you weren't really ever sure what he would do."

In addition to his dramatic actions over Vietnam, Haycox said, Gravel also had "a lot of crackpot ideas" on how to reshape Alaska, including a proposal to create an entire new city under a Plexiglas dome.

But Haycox also said that Gravel left a mark on history because of his emotional personality and his willingness to take risks that virtually no other politician would accept.

Now Gravel is out there again, storming through talk-show interviews about Iraq, ripping his Democratic opponents and telling audiences that he's working on his "anger management."

It's not clear how hard he's trying at that last task.

"I'm entitled at my age to get angry," he said. "How do you feel about torture, about countries who are no threat to us? With what's going on in the world today, if you're not angry, you have no heartbeat."

[Tripp]

He's telling the truth.

so the kids got one of them slot car things for christmas...i was so into it that my wife and family got me a set for my birthday...only bigger cars...there like 5 inches long...things are sweet and fast...and so detailed.

what can I say I'm a geek...plus i'll never actually be able to drive one of these cars...

suuuuuure BF.

[Poop Fresh-Herbed Pickles]

Oooh, my DVR has the Val Lewton retrospective from TCM last night. I know what I'm doing tonight...

And tomorrow? Tomorrow is the big immigration interview for me and my wife. Any positive mind atoms on that one are greatly appreciated.

It'll be a breeze.  They're just trying to sniff out fraudulent marriages.

[brainfiber]

they gave me a laptop at work, so if i need to work at home I can.

I bought one of them wireless routers but can't get the damn thing to work. I hooked it all up...then the laptop says it's getting a connection...but nothing works...any clue?

[captqitn]

hmp.    nope.   I'm getting a wireless router for the house next week.   so, do me a favor,  become a total expert and then help me next week, k?


oh and do me one more favor?   chug this entire can without taking a breath.

c'mon.... be a pal.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Poop Fresh-Herbed Pickles]

Jacques Tourneur directed some of his foinest movies for Val Lewton.

[Poop Fresh-Herbed Pickles]

It's funny.  I was thinking about Brad Renfro yesterday before I heard anything about his death.  The kid was more troublefucked than Edward Furlong.

[Poop Fresh-Herbed Pickles]

they gave me a laptop at work, so if i need to work at home I can.

I bought one of them wireless routers but can't get the damn thing to work. I hooked it all up...then the laptop says it's getting a connection...but nothing works...any clue?

Hrm

[brainfiber]

hmp.    nope.   I'm getting a wireless router for the house next week.   so, do me a favor,  become a total expert and then help me next week, k?


oh and do me one more favor?   chug this entire can without taking a breath.

c'mon.... be a pal.

man is that real...cause they do make them bloody beers.