anyone want to run for President? you'll have to go through me!

showtime's planning a new reality television show in which the winner will be given $200,000 toward their campaign and invaluable television exposure throughout the series. current officeholders and declared candidates for any public office need not apply. if you can manage to get someone to film you giving a 15 minute tour of your own life, and respond in varying levels of detail to approximately 10 pages of questions regarding your personal life, professional history, ideals, platform, criminal record, & aspirations (among other things) you too can be considered.

i feel it's my civic duty to inform readers that, although nowhere in their materials and information does it state that the intended candidates for their program must be 35 years of age or older by their assumption of the Office of the Presidency AND must have been born in the United States to actually qualify for the office, this is in fact the law. still feel like applying for the job? click here to fill out a brief questionnaire and download the official entry form.

as for myself, I'm seriously considered declaring my official candidacy for the Office of the Presidency. while i entertain no fantasy that i might actually be elected to the post, the opportunity to speak my mind on behalf of the American people is definitely very tempting. if i decide to follow through with my presidential bid i'll be sure to keep readers informed of my progress. i could certainly use the work.

speaking of having too much time on my hands, i took this picture in my front yard today. thanks again to my wonderful parents for the wonderful digital camera. (See Martha, I told you he was a family man!) it's been misting off and on here all morning, and the plants are loving it. (I told you George, he's for the environment!) Chowder couldn't care less- he's sleeping under my chair as i type this, as is his wont. as it should be. readers can find a picture of my faithful companion Chowder here. (That should be good for some of the ASPCA vote.) this is a particularly lovely example of what can be done in a garden when you have no gardening skill but the plants are sturdy. the name of this particular kind of bush escapes me at the moment. i'm sure I just lost the "gardener vote". Perhaps what I gain in the "hobbyist photographer vote" will offset that.

hallelujah i think i've finally got this thing licked

this is the first real post to my new blog/homepage. i hope it all works out as well as i hoped. turning my existing homepage into this blog was an exercise in frustration. it's amazing how dangerous someone with a little knowledge of code can be.

some things have to be beat to death before they'll get out of my head. so there it is. i think this one has joined the Choir Invisible.

let's see if this posts as i think it will. and just to cover all the bases....

this is one of my old haunts, Richmond Beach on Puget Sound, just south of Woodway, Washington. i didn't take the picture tho- i snabbed it out of some guy's UW webserver folder. don't ask me how i came to be looking through this guy's files...it's a long story. i think he took it himself, and it looks like he was there just at the right time to watch the sun do its thing. gotta love the Olympic Mountains from across the water- beautiful.

drowning in a sea of code

making a weblog to be read by no one is like painting a picture of blank canvas. it's quite obvious that i have too much time on my hands. nevertheless i am compelled. not obsessed, but definitely compelled. if i didn't feel like i had something to offer to the Universe i would just shrink to nothing and cease to Be. i wonder how many people in the world are feeling exactly like me right now.

it seems to me that the CSS code used in formatting the appearance of the weblogs of most people is pretty much....optional? i don't know. there are certain tags which obviously need to be there. don't know if they'll work without the style definitions in the head of the HTML document or not. some of the khoulest things people are doing in their weblogs are done with PHP and other scripting tools- unfortunately this server doesn't support the use of server-side scripting tools- which they deem "third party applications". the reason they gave me for this is that they won't support them, but i have a feeling it's more like a security risk or something.

most of what the CSS code does is control formatting on the page; everyone seems to have something against tables. what's wrong with tables, say i? they're functional. they format things in the same ways. the benefit to be had from standardizing the look of the output through style sheets doesn't necessarily preclude the use of tables anyway. a combination of both might serve quite well.

it's hard to justify the amount of time i've spent making this whole thing do what it does, when no one reads this. and i mean NO ONE. this is called ThoseDudes blog because i was hoping to get the rest of ThoseDudes jazzed on the idea of sharing some of their collective knowledge and erudite opinion on Subjects Vast And Varied, but at the moment....no one seems interested in pursuing this project but me. it's a catch-22. if this was a decently circulated blog, i could get them to write for it. if they wrote for it, it might be a well-circulated blog.

mayhaps daunted be they at the idea of contributing Time and Effort to a project with no Tangible Benefit. in truth, the futility of writing Diatribes Profound and casting them forth to Cyberobscurity is somewhat discouraging to even my compulsive/obsessive heart. no matter. i shall endeavor to persevere.

stretch your legs, walk around, i could be here awhile. i can go all night. i've never been accused of not being able to talk- and i can type almost as fast as i can speak.

i've begun programming the drum lines for another song. it's an old one that never got recorded properly, though the initial demo turned out fair enough. tried playing it in the band a few times, but it never really caught on. again- no matter. i can do it justice alone. i'm used to doing things alone. it's how i spend the majority of my time.

one thing i do have a decent response to is my music. i recently posted a 21 songs (some newer, some older) here. people seem to be liking them. when i split them out of the "General Rock" category into separate ones, many of them appeared instantly on the "charts". Another of ThoseDudes did me the courtesy of introducing an aquaintance of his with them and she "listened to them all weekend" and paid me some nice compliments. compliments are great. i like compliments.

i'll be posting more music there in the not-too-distant future. i want to wait a little while and see what happens with the ones i posted already. i'm kinda hopin' someone'll check 'em all out and decide their band can't live without me as a guitarist and offer me a whole lot of money to play Big Shows. that will happen right before purple monkeys start flyin' outta my butt.

i guess i'll just have to learn to live with getting the occasional compliment and making music only to satisfy my creative urge and further my musical knowledge. i'm seriously considering giving guitar lessons. actually i've been "seriously considering" giving guitar lessons for some time. quite some time. is it still considered "seriously considering" something after a certain amount of time? or is that called "not-so-seriously-considering". i need a job. actually i need another cup of coffee.

guess i'll take this opportunity to unglue myself from this chair and pursue something else for awhile.

if anyone actually read this....thanks.

let's all rush outside the courtroom...

with our color-coded scarves and our (mis)marked placards in our incredible rush to be the very First to report whether media icon Martha Stewart was found guilty or not on this or that charge- by a few milliseconds!   i don't suppose even one of those fools possessed sufficient maturity to walk out of the courtroom, secure in the knowledge that the average viewer cares Not One Iota who was First to report something that became common knowledge worldwide before any of them finished their close-ups.   i'm sure they all looked beautiful on camera after tripping over one another like 6 yr olds at Baskin Robbins in Death Valley.   what a disgusting display of unprofessionalism; it's really too bad this isn't a singular incident.

everyone hates the media circus that pop icon trials have become (except the media); they should assign an officer of the court to report facts to the media en masse.   sure, i enjoyed watching Martha sulk past the Teeming Hordes with their microphones and cameras, as much as any of my fellow upper-lower-classmates did.   who hasn't had an urge to see a Fat Cat finally get nailed for (their routine) cheating at games most of us will never play?   she most likely deserves any penalty imposed on her (the jury evidently believed so).   nevertheless, Martha's unwillingness to accept a loss of $X on stocks she held is no more damnable a character fault than the kindergarten professionalism of reporters shown on this and many other occasions.   take away their damn recess already, and send a note home to Mom.

re: marriage licenses for homosexual couples

i'm definitely not a card-carryin' Republican, though my views do tend to lean conservatively.   i am an atheist, and an independent in the voting booth.   and i've got nothing against homosexuals (though i'm not one).

marriage originated as a union before god (i use lower case g intentionally) and is essentially a religious matter.   it was never intended by the founders of our democratic republic that our government meddle in the private lives of its citizens, and specifically not in matters of religious observance.   being required to file an application for marriage with the government is fundamentally wrong, and serves no public interest- unless you count the revenue collected from those licenses (which is probably more than eaten up by the bureaucracy which processes them).   government's claim of authority to grant or deny those licenses amounts to tacit approval of a religious custom, and is yet another example of the creeping bloat that eventually permeates all longstanding authorities.

in our lamentable march toward the truncated form of liberty we now suffer, our government has also endowed married couples with special privileges denied singles and non-married couples.   huge sections of existing tax code are intended to promote the financial well-being of families.   in the government's view, marriage is intended to promote nuclear families, and the financial incentives to marry supposedly create a stable societal environment, which in turn promotes society's longevity.   regardless of intent, the practice is wrong. marriage is a private matter between two people and their belief system(s), and civic considerations for individuals should not depend on their marital status.   government's refusal to grant polygamous marriage licenses to people is another example of religious-dogma-based moral posturing on the issue of marriage.

extending the scope of existing wrongs by expanding the class of people they pertain to is a step in the wrong direction.   government should abandon the practice of quantifying a person by marital status, just as it should not measure a person by their other religious practices or their race or gender.

another problem with bearing on this question is commonlaw marriage.   when two people of opposite genders co-habitate for long enough, in many states, regardless of any sexual relationship between them, common law can deem them married and they can be held to the same standards (i.e. child support/parental obligation and spousal support) as others who have actively sought licenses to marry.   sanctioning homosexual marriage poses problems determining matters of common law under conventional models.

i do not support a constitutional amendment banning marriage between homosexuals; i'm against any limitations of a person's rights, which should be inviolable to the point they begin to infringe upon another's person, property, or freedom of expression.   extending the Constitution of the United States to act as a barrier toward the free expression of peoples' personal belief systems is repugnant to me.

many homosexuals see marriage as a death blow to conventional moral norms; they actively promote what is essentially a lifestyle choice by any means necessary or convenient- and marriage is a huge step toward societal conventionalization of homosexual behavior.   clearly, many people (easily the majority) don't want this to happen in our society.   i don't personally view homosexual behavior as "wrong" or "bad" but i certainly don't believe it's "healthy" or "normal".   i'd be apalled if schools were forced to openly acknowledge homosexual couples as "normal" family units.   that tacit implication of "normality" would undermine parents' ability to teach their children otherwise.   i know from experience that discussing familial relationships with children is complicated enough, in a society in which broken marriages are commonplace.   fundamentally changing the nature of what is viewed as a familial unit is not in the best interest of children or the vast majority of parents in this society.

tolerance of others' behavior is one thing; embracing it is another.   governmental sanctioning of what a clear majority of the people feel is immoral conduct is an uphill battle to say the least.   while i don't believe government should do anything to hinder homosexual behavior, i also believe it shouldn't sanction it- it should be silent on the issue. the only equitable manner in which government can do this is to remain silent on the issue of marriage altogether.   rather than a step toward civil recognition of homosexual marriages, society should take steps to eliminate policy which acknowledges a person's marital status whatsoever.

that's my $.02 worth.