Apropos of Cebra's post below, I learned about this wing of the Kerry campaign today. You can sign up to write a letter a week (or more) to your local media outlets and, particularly with regard to the debates tonight (and next week), make sure that a conditional Kerry/Truth spin is as strong or stronger than the inevitable Bush/Lies spin.
Sounds like a great way to increase your numerator, and you don't even have to leave your sofa. From the site:
We are organizing a national post-debate, rapid-response effort that will reinforce Kerry's position on Iraq and we need Media Corps members to set the pace. If you aren't already a Media Corps member, join now.As soon as the debate ends, we will first e-mail Media Corps members the rapid-response assignment. All you'll need is access to e-mail and/or telephone.
To prepare yourself and your Media Corps groups, please make sure you have telephone numbers for local and state radio stations and TV networks ready. Please look up that information now using Congress.org.
Any other information, such as the e-mail addresses for major news networks or your local newspapers, we will provide you.
What is John Kerry's Media Corps?
John Kerry's Media Corps is John Kerry's rapid response network. Media Corps is a group of committed supporters who want to bring John Kerry's message home to local media markets. If you can contribute five to ten minutes of your time a week -- and your creativity and energy -- we'll supply you with all the information you need to become one of our Online Advocates.
Who's in?
PS -- And in case you think the other team isn't way ahead already, read this. "No misstatement will go unchallenged." Right, except their own.
| 2004 Election | Media | Media Corps | Vast Left-wing Conspiracy |
Depressing to read mathematical proof that my vote is meaningless and that every minute I spend going to and from my polling place will be more proof of sucker status than lounging in a bar waiting for my Keno numbers to come up. Since I'm still going to head down and pull that lever (or punch that chad or touch that screen or whatever they do here in San Diego) anyway, I'm clearly a pretty irrational person. And so are all of you good Brooklyn souls. However, there is a sliver of hope for us.
The vote-decision math says that in a 50/50 state like Florida 6 million people, any one vote has a 1/3071 chance of being the deciding one. If you can only influence your own vote (assuming first that you live in Florida), you're still just playing the lottery. But there are ways you can affect the numerator! You can drive to a swing state and register voters. You can give swing-state voters a ride to the polls (if you can get there on election day). You could forward that article to all the Republicans you know--especially the rational ones--and induce them to stay home.
Or, the best idea I've seen: call people in swing states who've raised their hands to the Kerry-Edwards campaign and give them information on how they can get involved with door-to-door canvassing in their state. What's great about this is the leverage effect--each of your successful calls could in turn create a handful of additional votes. Who knows, through heroic efforts you might just be able to have an influence over, say, 100 swing state votes? In which case your odds are no longer 3000-to-1 Powerball odds, but more like the 30-to-1 odds of getting dealt a pair of kings in 5-card stud. And the payoff if Kerry wins would be worth that gamble.
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Orgies "eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged" but the direct election of senators (the 17th amendment) was "a bad idea." Sounds to me like Tony smoked a bowl with Alan Keyes, and they came up with their constitutional convictions together. At least, I hope that explains it ...
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Someday this will rank up there with "What hath God wrought!" and "Mr Watson -- come here -- I want to see you."
| Cryptography |
It had been a while since I'd checked out Ethel the Blog, a very smart leftie who unfortunately hasn't been blogging for the last couple of weeks (and who also lacks an RSS feed. Get one, Ethel!)
As usual some great stuff on there, some of which I'll comment on later, but this article from June caught my attention. Does anyone else remember the conspiracy theory that FEMA was already in NYC on the morning of 9/11? Some FEMA worker said in an interview that he'd arrived there the day before, and it was among the thousand or so rumors that were circulating around then, this one in the "the gubmint knew!" category. It was quickly debunked, with everyone saying that the FEMA worker merely had his dates mixed up.
Not so fast!
In Rudy Giuliani's testimony to the 9/11 comission, he stated:
Later on I visited the police department, our backup command center, our number two backup command center would have been the police department, 7 World Trade Center was the primary one, the backup was the police academy.[...] But then we realized pretty shortly that the police academy was too small, and we selected Pier 92 as our command center.So FEMA was there on the morning of 9/11, they were getting ready for a drill that was scheduled for the next day. Take your pick between massive coincidence and massive conspiracy. (BTW, I emailed snopes to tell them to consider updating their entry on this.)And the reason Pier 92 was selected as the command center was because on the next day, on September 12th, Pier 92 was going to have a drill. It had hundreds of people here, from FEMA, from the federal government, from the state, from the State Emergency Management Office, and they were getting ready for a drill for biochemical attack. So that was going to be the place they were going to have the drill. The equipment was already there so we were able to establish a command center there within three days that was two-and-a-half to three times bigger than the command center that we had lost at 7 World Trade Center. And it was from there that the rest of the search and rescue effort was completed.
While your busy crafting that tinfoil hat, there's some other news I hadn't heard, also referenced in Ethel's post: on the morning of 9/11, we were conducting military exercises, including simulated hijackings. This may have led to confusion at NORAD.
There's certainly a lot of confusion about these exercises. With many names sounding similar, it's hard to tell whether there were five exercises, or one; whether they were all simulating a Russian air invasion, or whether any of them had simulated hijackings. Google turned up reliable confirmation of a Vigilant Guardian semi-annual exercise, and a Northern Vigilance, and a Northern Guardian, but which actually took place in Iceland. But if you want the full-on conspiracy-theory version, you can read here, or this excerpt from Mike Ruppert's upcoming "Crossing the Rubicon".
I think the shiny metal looks good on me, don't you?
| Conspiracy Theories |
There are those of us who share a passion (or at least an, um, healthy nostalgia) for D&D. And there are those with the habit of commenting on blogs, message boards, newsgroups, etc. At the intersection of both Venn diagram circles lies the Internet Message Board Wandering Monster Table.
But really, how many people really fall into both categories? It must be, like, tens. Or dozens.
Fortunately, Ish has a +4 "Blacklist" shield against the "Evil Merchant".
(Via Winds of Change)
| Netiquette |
In case you've missed the news (covered on every lib site I've seen), the Ohio Secretary of State is attempting to block new voter registrations because of paper stock. The Ohio rules state that voter registration cards be printed on thick, 80-pound stock paper, and Blackwell is ensuring that voter cards on thinner paper are thrown back. Atrios points out that this violates the federal Voting Rights Act, specifically the part that prevents the gubmint from: "deny[ing] the right of any individual to vote in any election because of an error or omission on any record or paper relating to any application, registration, or other act requisite to voting, if such error or omission is not material in determining whether such individual is qualified under State law to vote in such election."
First typesetting, now paper stock. Will this election be settled by printers? Or devils?
Anyway, you can let Blackwell know how you feel thusly:
J. Kenneth Blackwell-R
180 E. Broad St., 15th Floor
Columbus, OH 43215
614-466-3910
E-Mail: blackwell@sos.state.oh.us
Although you could also contact:
Governor Bob Taft
30th Floor
77 South High Street
Columbus, Ohio 43215-6117
Phone 614-466-3555 or 614-644-HELP
| Ohio |
Jewish leaders had complained that the book, which purports to tell of an international Jewish conspiracy to take over the world, was being sold on Walmart.com with a description that suggested it might be genuine instead of a forgery concocted by the Czarist secret police in the early 20th Century.The description, now withdrawn from the Wal-Mart Web site, said, "If ... The Protocols are genuine (which can never be proven conclusively), it might cause some of us to keep a wary eye on world affairs. We neither support nor deny its message. We simply make it available for those who wish a copy."
In a statement e-mailed to Reuters, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman said, "Based on significant customer feedback regarding the book titled 'The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion,' we have made a business decision to remove this book ... from our site at www.walmart.com."
Via MetaFilter. Who in the book-buying department at Wal-Mart decided that selling the Protocols made good sense?
| Anti-Semitism | Protocols of the Elders of Zion |
There are 17 different mastheads that randomly rotate above. Why 17? Because I ran out of creative juice at that point. Anyway, I think it's time to shake things up around here, and so I'm asking you, the Ishbadiddle-reading public, to submit your own designs for a new masthead to be added to the list. (You can see them all here.) Format is 100 px high, 600 px wide. Must say "Ishbadiddle". Email them to me: ishbadiddle @ triptronix.net. You'll win honor and glory, as Dr. Hemminger would say. And maybe a gmail account, if you want one.
| Design |
Are you looking for some easy to do, direct action to get W out of the White House? Do you have a cell phone with free long distance and weekend minutes? Do you need to get outdoors more? Then this is the project for you! Democracy In The Park, organized by America Coming Together. We did this last week, thanks to Perrin, and it was great.
The idea is pretty simple: you get a list of swing-state voters, you call them up, you ask them who they're thinking of voting for, and what their key issues are. ACT follows up later. It's very painless, you don't have to convince anyone of anything. I got through a list of 25 voters in New Hampshire, and actually spoke to 5 people who were home and willing to answer a survey. 2 Bush supporters, 1 undecided, 1 leaning toward Kerry, 1 Kerry supporter. So get out there, and start smiling and dialing! In NYC, they're in Central Park, Tompkins Square Park, Union Square, Prospect Park, and McCarren Park in Williamsburg. In Boston they're in JFK park, and they're at the Memorial Glade on the UC Berkeley campus. Charge up your phones!
Oh, and thanks to Trip for sending us this link to a pep talk by Michael Moore. Go read, you disheartened Democrats.
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Thudfactor finds out. Go read.
| 2004 Election |
Stamps.com is a company that lets you generate postage directly from your computer, like having a Pitney-Bowes machine of your very own. Recently, they had the brilliant idea of letting people make their own stamps, with photos they wanted to use. The restricted the images so that you couldn't use hate speech or pornography, but they hadn't counted on the merry pranksters at the Smoking Gun:
Continue reading "The road to comedy is paved with good intentions" » 
I've never played them, but every once in a while I'll see the teaser for one of those sports video games playing on the demo Xbox in the window of the game store downstairs, and think: my gosh that looks, well, not like real life, but pretty close to a televised sportscast. Well, it just might have to substitute for the real thing. With the NHL on strike, what are hockey fans to do? Watch the videogame recreation, of course. According to the G4tv press release, "all 1,230 regular season games originally slated for the 2004-2005 NHL season will be played, with results of each video game match-up available to fans who tune-in daily."
And, in other virtual news, players of The Sims 2 can have their avatars play The Sims 1 on their virtual computers.
Have we gone beyond the last visible dog yet?
| Games |
A close look by a disarming columnist / commentator / author at the issues facing the candidates this year shows that one of these groups may decide the upcoming election. That group is the Cheerioians, because the Lucky Charmers are six years old, and therefore cannot vote. More importantly, they can't read my columns, which unerringly describe the shape and fabric of the America that exists inside my own head.From robot filter.
O'REILLY: What do you think Kerry wants to get out of coming on your show?Make sure you also read the part about the right of puppets to vote. I'm not sure whether O'Reilly is being serious here, or just going along with Stewart's jokes. Does O'Reilly have a sense of humor? Has anyone seen it?STEWART: He wants to get what any politician does: access to a new constituency. He wants to get...
O'REILLY: The stoned slackers.
STEWART: ... that's exactly right, because the stoned slackers, this election is going to rely on the undecided. Who is more undecided than...
O'REILLY: Than the stoned slacker, right.
STEWART: ... the people who are high. Right now, they're thinking to themselves, ice cream or pretzels, ice cream or pretzels.
| Bill O'Reilly | Jon Stewart | 2004 Election |
| PowerPoint | Spam | Malware | Tufte Alert |
ABC Afterschool Specials on DVD -- in their own Trapper Keeper packaging! From rf Chris, are you ready to add this to your wedding registry?
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US homeland security acted swiftly today to stop dangerous individual Yusuf Islam aka Cat Stevens aka Steven Demeter Georgiou who was found at liberty in the United States.
Homeland Security spokesman Brian Doyle said Islam was being put on the first available flight back to Britain. His Washington D.C.-bound plane was diverted on Tuesday to Bangor, Maine, after his name turned up on U.S. lists of suspected terrorists.Continue reading "Riding the peace train ... back to the UK" »"Why is he on the watch lists? Because of his activities that could be potentially linked to terrorism. The intelligence community has come into possession of additional information that further raises our concern," Doyle said.
| Airplanes | Security | Cat Stevens |
"What the f____ was that?"
There were only three of us in the office, and we all ran to the windows, opened them up, and out to the balcony. Then:
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
And again: "What the f____ was that?"
There were people on the roofs and balconies of the buildings all around us. We shouted questions to them but no one else had any idea. From 25 floors up, all we could see was that something had happened a block up, on 8th between 36th and 37th, and that it was being hurriedly cordoned off by the police. And firetrucks were on their way. Quick response, but then the President was in town. The President was in town. What was going on?
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
Whatever it was, it was really loud. Building-shaking loud. After the third concussion, my coworker said: "we are getting the f______ out of here." So we did. Patrick, who works a block away, calls. "Did you hear that?" I tell him we're getting out, advise him to do same. I was in the middle of a critical email, which I signed off with "I am getting out of here as there are large explosions outside." Hit send, grab stuff, go. I have my emergency pack that I always carry, since 9/11 -- these days it has crayons in it as well as a dust mask. Damn, I forgot to put the flashlight back in it.
Outside, more trucks coming. They blocked off 8th from 34th street up. Two thirds of the people were getting the hell out, one third trying to videotape or photograph or phonecam the action. Whatever. Someone tells us that they're telling us to stay away from manholes. We don't stick around to find out what happened. "I'd rather hear it on the news," says my coworker, and I agree. I call Debbie to tell her what's going on.
As it turns out, it was an underground electrical fire that blew off five manhole covers. We figured on a gas main, but pretty quickly ruled out terrorism. After all, there's nothing on that block that's really targetable. Unless someone wanted to take out Gray's Papaya. Or some adult video stores. Or some junkies.
Let me tell you a bit about this neighborhood I work in. It's at the juncture of three influences: Port Authority bus terminal to the north, Macy's to the east, and the Garment District. The first brings us the aforementioned crackheads, cockroach bodegas, and p0rn stores; the second, gradually increasing in influence, brings stores like Staples (now across the street so I can regularly indulge in my office supplies fetish), other chains, and "eateries"; the last means I can go out and buy bolts of cloth any time I want to. Cheap! Case in point: the east side of 8th between 34th and 35th has: a McDonald's, a Starbucks, a TGIFriday's, a pawn shop, a battery-and-headphone store (how do those guys ever make money?), a cheap shoe store, and a XXX emporium. I'd like to think it's the only block in America with that particular combination, but I could be wrong.
This nexus of sleaze, capitalism, and sweatshop goods is of course the ideal place to hold the Republican National Convention. Which of course they did.
But I digress.
My coworker and I swap 9/11 and blackout stories on the way home. When I get out of the train I call my family in case they hear about it on the evening news. "It didn't make PBS," my father says. I picture Jim Lehrer doing a lead-in: "tonight in Manhattan..."
I did replace the flashlight in my bag, though.
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In Address at U.N., Bush Defends Decision to Invade Iraq
The president asserted that Iraq will be a beacon of freedom and that nations should not falter in the fight against terror.
Now, I ask you: “How inconsistent is that?”: On the one hand, they report that the Pres defended a decision, and on the other that he asserted something prima facie (and really, he admonished the other nations, I wouldn’t say he asserted something about them). To me, this smacks of the embarrassing situation we saw at one of the pre–Iraq Invasion news conferences, when none of the journalists present had anything but softballs for George. But at the same time, this is after the Times admitted that it didn't do enough research on the administration’s claims about Iraq before the war. Really, now.
New on the links: Colin's great political blog Undecided Nation, the newly arisen Scorched Angel, and artist Regia Marinho. Also: Citizen Joe is up and running, providing the latest on policy issues, and pesky' is doing a series on -- gasp can it be? -- the actual issues in this campaign. Nary a superscript brouhaha to be found, folks.
| Reference |
Electoral-Vote now features a Daily cartogram of the electoral votes, shaded by strength of support. I'm happy to have played a small part in making this election more Tufte-friendly.
| Tufte Alert | Maps |
The New York Times wrote an article about NYC Bloggers. Here's the article: By Their Subway Stations Ye Shall Know Them. Neat!
| New York Times |
Let me tell you about this city.
Let me tell you.
Last winter I came out of the subway, and ascended the stairs into unexpected snow. I love snow, city snow even, but suddenly -- there I was again. My heart racing. An ice grip constricting my throat. It wasn't snow, but ashes.
Oh no, I thought. Don't take the joy of snow away from me, too. I stood quite still, just watching the white flakes in the air, unable to move into the present, into September 12th, into 2004.
{But I'm here now. Things are better. Aren't they?}
And a bird, as surprised as I was by the sudden snowburst, was flying up 35th Street, wings beating against the wind, so that we were both motionless it seemed. The bird, and me, and the space between us, and the bricks of the buildings and the swirl of air and memory and frozen water.
Whose soul was that?
It's hard not to talk about 9/11 right now and not talk about politics. But I'm not going to talk about the campaigning at Ground Zero. I just want to tell you about this city.
Earlier this week, the edge of Hurricane Frances nearly shut down the transit system in New York. There were only 2 trains running from Brooklyn to Manhattan -- the C and A -- and it seemed that all 8 million of us were crammed on to it, for a nice two hour commute. (Who needs anthrax, I was thinking, all they need to louse up the works is a few inches of rain.) Someone asked me later if people had flipped out on each other, and I said, "of course not. We all acted like New Yorkers" -- that is, resigned to overcome whatever the city had to throw at us today, and suddenly becoming an expert on how to cope. Just like that day, crossing the bridge with a million people just trying to get home.
Let me tell you about this city. We're bigger than anything you can throw at us.
It's quite late so I'm just going to read you some poetry. Here's one that Liz posted up on her site in memory of 9/11/01:
Riding the Elevator Into the Sky
by Anne Sexton (1975)
As the fireman said:
Don't book a room over the fifth floor
in any hotel in New York.
They have ladders that will reach further
but no one will climb them.
As the New York Times said:
The elevator always seeks out
the floor of the fire
and automatically opens
and won't shut.
These are the warnings
that you must forget
if you're climbing out of yourself.
If you're going to smash into the sky.
Many times I've gone past
the fifth floor,
cranking toward,
but only once
have I gone all the way up.
Sixtieth floor: small plants and swans bending
into their grave.
Floor two hundred:
mountains with the patience of a cat,
silence wearing its sneakers.
Floor five hundred:
messages and letters centuries old,
birds to drink,
a kitchen of clouds.
Floor six thousand:
the stars,
skeletons on fire,
their arms singing.
And a key,
a very large key,
that opens something?
some useful door?
somewhere?
up there.
| Poetry |
Indicators measure the nation's unemployment rate, consumer spending and other economic milestones, but Vice President Dick Cheney says they miss the hundreds of thousands who make money selling on eBay.
"That's a source that didn't even exist 10 years ago,'' Cheney told an audience in Cincinnati on Thursday. "Four hundred thousand people make some money trading on eBay."
Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards responded that Cheney's comments show how "out of touch'' he and President Bush are with the economy.
"If we only included bake sales and how much money kids make at lemonade stands, this economy would really be cooking,'' Edwards said in a statement.
| Dick Cheney | John Edwards | eBay |
So when I first heard that 60 Minutes was coming up with new evidence that Bush had skipped out on his National Guard duty, I thought, "Good!" They go after Kerry (by proxy) for his Vietnam record? Fine, the Dems should do the same to Bush.
Then I got an IM from whatsapundit saying that the memos were obviously forgeries. "They're typeset! Look at this!" So I looked. And, in the penultimate line of the first paragraph, there it was: a superscripted "th" after a number.
Mark points out why this is as typographically wrong as a J on a Roman column:
To get the superscripted "th" the [typewriter] operator would have had to remove the type element, replace it with a different element with the right size font, manually adjust the roller to get the superscript, replace the special element with the original, re-adjust the roller (careful! Or the text won’t line up correctly!), then continue.[...]But surprise, surprise! Microsoft Word today does all that stuff for you automatically. Young folks take all the typesetting trickery for granted. And usually I do too. Then again, I haven't ever tried to forge a document supposedly created in 1972.
And I concur. In 1972 my mom was running a typing service out of our one-bedroom apartment in Bryn Mawr. The hum of the Selectric soothed me to sleep. I grew up with typewriters, and in 1982 or thereabouts, with the first word processors. This stuff is in my blood.
He's got more in there, about proportional spacing, and the apostrophes.
Two more pieces of evidence from my own observations.
Look at this memo:
They've put a space before any "th" or "st" to avoid the superscript. Guess they just forgot on the May 72 memo?
Secondly: I figured they'd use Courier, which is closer to what a typewriter might produce in 1972. Nope. I opened up Word, and retyped the May memorandum. Using the Word defaults (1.25" margins left and right, Times New Roman 12 point), the line breaks come at exactly the same places. (You need to put an extra space before the last sentence of point 1, but it looks like it's in the original too.) I ask you, what's the chance of that happening? That a document typed in 1972 (when you hit "return" at the end of every line, remember) and one word-processed in 2004 would look so similar?
Top: Screen cap of 1972 memo from CBS News. Bottom: MS Word copy of same, using defaults.
Update: I tried doing the MS Word experiment again, and strangely, this popped up:
| George W. Bush | John Kerry | Rathergate |
Remix of W singing "Sunday Bloody Sunday." Via
pesky'apostrophe
| U2 | MP3 |
But... if I look inside, won't the cat die?
| Physics | Amazon.com | Schrodinger | Cats |
In what is likely not a 100% complete archive at the site of the American Museum of the Moving Image, you are cordially invited to take consolation or despair in television political ads reaching back to 1952. One thing’s sure: Taking the high road is no guarantee of victory.
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In the spirit of, “Well, hell, you never know…” I’ve undertaken a small political experiment and I invite all of you to join in.
As we kick off the last stage of the election, there is still a good deal of attention being paid to the “Undecideds.” Now, I have some difficulty understanding how anyone at this late date can be truly undecided. But I credit their right to decide when they decide, and to get their information however suits them best.
I do think that the general sway of political conversation on the Web, as in real life, is highly polarized. The political blogs, while valuable in kicking the base, are certainly entrenched and run the risk of being echo chambers. The general media are so compulsively intent on appearing “objective” that the Swift Boat Veterans are allowed to raise spurious falsehoods as an “independent organization.” Even here on Ish, it has sometimes been difficult to maintain a healthy exchange of political perspectives. So much so, perhaps, that we don’t do it much anymore.
To do my incredibly little part, then, I’ve tried to start a niche on the internet into which Undecideds might wander, unassailed, and find relevant information that makes a liberal point or two, without shrieking.
I invite all you regular Ishers to visit, and participate in, Undecided Nation. In fact, I urgently request your help in creating a quick mini-community that will, using a tone of reasoned skepticism, disseminate facts about Bush’s record and Kerry’s qualifications. I am not proposing any kind of deceit (I am currently posting as a Kerry supporter), but I think that there is a chance to influence some tiny number of people who stumble onto the site. In fact, I know this is possible; it has already happened once. So, with the UNDies now tuning in (maybe we shouldn’t call them that), there is a chance to knock a couple of votes John’s way.
I would welcome any of your comments, and would eagerly sign you up as team posters if you were interested in participating in this experiment. (I am going to be offline for ten days in September and would love to have someone posting then!)
Feel free to check out my take on Bush’s speech and the RNC tone in general. I also have touched on some good reading materials and a great cartoon. I meant to get this going long ago, but now will have to do. I hope to keep embellishing the links and such up until the end of October, so please feel free to join in with suggestions.
Thanks! And I hope to see you there.
| Undecided Voters | John Kerry | George W. Bush |
The path from the farmer's market leads along the river, and I was walking home, heavily laden with vegetables and fruit, when I noticed a boatful of young teenagers (high school freshmen? They all look so young to me now) coming in my direction from behind.
I listened carefully for the usual remark, and wondered what it would be. My mind flashed forward to a scene of myself, explaining to a judge, why I had decided to wastefully pelt these kids with my precious produce. I was also wondering, in another part of my mind, whether I would miss my peaches or beets more, and which ones would be more accurate to throw. I wished I had picked up some overripe tomatoes just a few minutes before, to make sauce with and to express myself more precisely with. With the anniversary of 9-11 approaching, I really didn't feel like smiling and turning the other cheek at a threat, an accusation of terrorism, or my favorite phrase (which I haven't heard here yet), "Sand Nigger."
Continue reading "Nice Beard!" » | Vorks |
