http://www.cardiscs.com/blogpins.html

http://www.leisuretown.com/

http://magic-cone.com/animation1.htm

Waiting in line at the pharmacy last night, I saw a strange object attached to the wall:

What the hell is this thing?

Dinner with bikupan at Kappo Honda:

Hamachi (yellowtail) sashimi;
Ika-maru (whole grilled squid);
Yaki-Onigiri (grilled rice cake with eel. I ate Nicolette’s portion by “accident”)

Good sake.

Mmmmmmmmmm. This place reminds me a lot of the Modern Club in Vancouver. The squid dish was almost identical to the squid fimmtiu got for his Landing day when I was there.

Place was packed with happy noisy Japanese people, including a middle aged woman with pumpkin smiley faces all over her socks.

I didn’t get the chicken cartilage on a stick or the natto or the gizzard because I’m scared of those. I did eat one of Johan’s shrimp heads because he wouldn’t, though.

Looks like all the gawker feeds stopped providing images today, or something. Thanks guys.

I had a reasonably good day. No, let’s correct that. I had a wonderful day because I am a rich white male and I live in Newport Beach, CA. Someone I know who lives in Moscow, Russia was last week attacked by wild dogs. That doesn’t happen here. Plus, the weather is better.

I’m also glad that I don’t live in Shenzhen, China. Jack’s uncle wanted him to go work in a hydraulics factory there and live in some mercury-encrusted lean-to in a town that’s more of a shithole than Shenzhen even. He’d be production manager probably and get to deal with things like “The #8 homphulizer blew up and killed 32 workers. Hire some more” etc. Instead, Jack is going to sell cars in Portland, Oregon.

Finally I’m glad that I don’t live in more nearby Norco, California where realitylost informs me one cannot go out and eat seafood. There just isn’t any. So she and I went out to the Crab Cooker tonight and hoovered up various fruits de mer.

i’m excited about going to San Francisco for a few days in May. Boooiiing.

Finally, a moment of unseemly levity:

Senator Chuck Grassley (R.-IA) wishes to pass a bill making credit card debt bankruptcy-proof, so that going through personal bankruptcy will not help those who have excessive card debt. Fairly standard big-money idea, and of course the credit card people are slavering for it.

Jeff points out that it’s a bit worse than that, though. Senator Grassley is not just fiscally conservative. He’s a fundamentalist Christian moral conservative who follows the strict evangelical line on gay marriage, abortion, sex in general, etc. But he won’t apply any Christian principles to debt. A plea from a Christian attorneys group to consider the biblical arguments against usury falls on deaf ears. Why? Because Chuck doesn’t want to mix government and religion! Why, that would be theocratic!

I can’t listen to Christian lawyers because I would be imposing the Bible on a diverse population,” Grassley said. “I’ll bet those lawyers wouldn’t want us to impose the principles of forgiving debt every seven years. If that were the law, nobody would loan them money.

Jeff’s full story, which I recommend for anyone interested in the current “religious” conservatism, is here.

This in a nutshell is why I left the Christian community. Hypocrisy is always part of a religious experience. But the people in my country who call themselves Christians are so puffed up with false pride, so in love with money, so ready to spend others’ lives for their own comfort, so hateful, so greedy, so imperial that to be an apostate is a great blessing to me.

We have met Antichrist, and it is us.

And he’ll take on anyone to get it.

Odd that Iceland is so happy to take him in. I guess they’re okay with anti-semitic racist nuts there? Certainly Bobby would feel comfortable surrounded by Vikings; the vast Jewish conspiracy can’t get him there.

Meet our new U.N. Ambassador, a man of whom Jesse Helms said that he’d want him standing next to him at Armageddon.

Our foreign policy is about to get a really bad mustache ride.