Idiomatic Expression

What is the world coming too? First Miss North Carolina had to resign under pressure. Now Danny may be stripped of his Supreme Champion title. What happened to honesty and fair play?

After years of neglect (four to be specific) I decided to tune-up my bike today. I bought a Mongoose Crossways 350 way back in 1998, and used it heavily prior to graduating from Va Tech in 1999. Since then I have schlepped it between three different residences. In that time I think I dusted it twice. So I started with a pretty good scrubbing. I even cleaned off some of the gunk from the chain-rings and cogs. How in the hell do bikes get so dirty?

The tires, chain, and all of my cables were in great condition. The front wheel, the cogs, and both derailleurs were in passable condition. The big chain ring had some obvious damage (a couple of teeth shorter than the others and a bit of other wear from chain slippage), but nothing that would prevent it from doing its job. The rear brake pads were shot, and the rear wheel was visibly tweaked. I was still holding out hope that adjusting the rear brakes would compensate for the not even close to out of whack wheel, and keep me from having to spend any money.

House Resolution 153 proclaims

“Whereas humility, fasting, and prayer in times of danger have long been rooted in our essential national convictions and have been a means of producing unity and solidarity among all the diverse people of this Nation as well as procuring the enduring grace and benevolence of God;

Whereas, through prayer, fasting, and self-reflection, we may better recognize our own faults and shortcomings and submit to the wisdom and love of God in order that we may have guidance and strength in those daily actions and decisions we must take; and

Whereas dangers and threats to our Nation persist and, in this time of peril, it is appropriate that the people of the United States, leaders and citizens alike, seek guidance, strength, and resolve through prayer and fasting: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that the President should issue a proclamation–

(1) designating a day for humility, prayer, and fasting for all people of the United States; and

(2) calling on all people of the United States–

(A) to observe the day as a time of prayer and fasting;

(B) to seek guidance from God to achieve a greater understanding of our own failings and to learn how we can do better in our everyday activities; and

(C) to gain resolve in meeting the challenges that confront our Nation.”

What in the hell happened to seperation of church and state? I thought our government had a goal of preventing people from going hungry, not encouraging it! Furthermore, shouldn’t our lawmakers be doing something useful like finding a way to finance the action(no official declaration of war) in Iraq?

Why does the House of Representatives waste its time with pointless fluff like this? I pay your wages, get back to work!

Over the last three weeks I have discovered that I actually like yard work. I enjoy cutting down trees, raking dead grass, and even shoveling dirt. Unfortunately with an older home doing a simple chore (Y) sometimes requires completing a number of dependent subtasks (Y_1-x) prior to getting started on Y.

(Y)My goal for the past weekend was too get some grass seeds down in the front yard in an attempt to have a lawn closer to green than brown this summer.

The first day of work went pretty well, Katherine and I procured all of the necessary materials. I spent four hours with my new bow rake and cleared away most of the dead grass from the yard (two 35 gal. bags worth). With that out of the way, all I needed to do was put down the seed, the fertilizer, and start watering the soon to be lawn twice a day.

The second day didn’t go quite so smoothly.

Customer who bought this blog also bought the following blogs.

An interesting concept based on the myelin: blogging ecosystem dataset. You can download the data here.

If I was less tired I might come up with some insightful observations, but I’m about to fall over from exhaustion, so check it out your DAMN self

I feel a new purpose in life I feel validated, oh wait that is the website not me.

At the request of a friend, I have altered the RSS templates for Idiomatic Expression. The default template only feeds the first fifteen words of an entry, of course I don’t know why anyone reads more than fifteen words of any given entry to begin with. Thanks go out to Andrew Dunn for putting together instructions so simple that I could follow them, and to Chris for pointing it out.

If any of the changes adversely effects your reading enjoyment, let me know.

Somebody needs to tell the burn out in this picture that Kevin Mitnick is out of jail. You have to smoke A LOT of weed to miss the press that Mitnick has been getting for the last year! Perhaps he just had this sign left over from his last demonstration back in 99.

I bet he smells like patchouli and dirt. Stupid hippy!

Arab News has an interesting article regarding France’s foreign policy. Even the people Chirac is bending over backwards to appease don’t like France.

The previous owners and tenets of my house had the horrendous bad taste to paint the beautiful brick wall of the living room. The currently exposed layer is your generic cheapo white latex paint. When we moved in the walls in the living room were painted a horrible salmon color with gold and black flecks. What is wrong with people? I don’t understand why anyone would inflict that sort of pain on themselves.

Katherine and I decided that the room would look much better if we exposed the natural color of the brick. A little research showed that Peel Away by Dumond Chemicals is the suggested method for separating paint from bricks.

That’s great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an aeroplane -
Lenny Bruce is not afraid. Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn -
world serves its own needs, regardless of your own needs. Feed it up a knock,
speed, grunt no, strength no. Ladder structure clatter with fear of height,
down height. Wire in a fire, represent the seven games in a government for
hire and a combat site. Left her, wasn’t coming in a hurry with the furies
breathing down your neck. Team by team reporters baffled, trump, tethered
crop. Look at that low plane! Fine then. Uh oh, overflow, population,
common group, but it’ll do. Save yourself, serve yourself. World serves its
own needs, listen to your heart bleed. Tell me with the rapture and the
reverent in the right - right. You vitriolic, patriotic, slam, fight, bright
light, feeling pretty psyched.

It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.