What a shock! I jumped in the truck to my internship today and turned on 1350 AM in ABQ (Air America Radio) and all I heard was Big Band music. Oh the horror! Not being able to listen to Al Franken and a nice little counter balance to the usual fare of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity out here.

Just got off of the phone with Clear Channel and they took away the fear and loathing (for a change) and said it was a power outage and things should be back online soon.

Are you tired of buying Levi's made in ... where the heck ever? Want good, solid jeans made at a pro-union shop? Why not show it proudly?

One of the few places I've stumbled across online in my quest for better looking clothing (what can I say? Must be the Fab Five influence on me ;-) ) is Union Jean Company. Their clothing is made in the USA by union workers, in fact you have have their union leather tag on your jeans in the place that the Levi tags are usually located if you're really gung-ho! ;-)

With no end to the NHL strike in sight, hockey fans in the Duke City have to be thankful for the Scorpions.

Or even the lowly Santa Fe Roadrunners. Come on up there, go to your teams games before the Scorps come up there and smack them around! ;-)

"Jane, Jane, Jane... you ignorant slut."

I can't resist. I just finished reading Jeffry Gardner's latest diatribe in the Albuquerque Tribune. Ah, Jeffry... your timing is almost perfect. I was kinda feeling a little down today and I needed a pick-me-up.

Where, oh where, to start.

He starts off by crying about the fact that a recent show slated to run on KUNM, the local PBS station, was taken off of the air. The reasoning given for the show, called "Unlocking the Mystery of Life," to have been taken off of the air has something to do with the fact that it was reportedly a TV show about creationism being passed off as "scientific fact." One of the groups involved in the "hideous censorship" was "New Mexicans for Science and Reason" (Who I owe a couple of pitchers of beer to)

To use a couple of terms from the late Dr. Carl Sagan ... Now pay attention Jeffry, there'll be a test on this at the end of class.

• Evolution = Science
• Creationism = Pseudo-Science

(Before you go there Jeffry, I'm not some God-loathing heathen. While my religion is my business, I think I could hold my own with you with half my soul tied behind my back. So don't bother.)

Back to the show, just ask any reputable scientist at a credible university. (Now now, Jeffry, running to Liberty U. or Bob Jones U. (aka "BJU", insert your own Bill and Monica joke here) won't cut it this time around. I mean a real uni. with a real science faculty.) and you'll find evolution the lesson of the day in Biology. And these are from scientists, many of whom (from my experience) are indeed Christians. Not the "Anti-Christian" voices that Jeffry appears to hear.

Am I willing to cut out "intelligent design theory" from the equation? Of course not, being open-minded, I'll give intelligent design (aka Creationism, aka "God created the earth in 6 days, guys are really made out of clay, women are made out of a rib... *mmmmm... ribs... where was I..* and the earth is 6,000 years old.") a fair shake.

Gee, open-mindedness... I guess it's all that scientific training I had in high school and at New Mexico Tech. I'm the first to say evolution still has some holes that need to be looked at, and might be filled with parts of intelligent design theory.

I'm sure that there are merits to intelligent design, and I'm sure some kind, sweet person out there will be able to supply me with some articles to read that aren't laced too much with religious doctrine.

What irritates me are people like Jeffry (can I call you Jeffry? I feel like I know you so well after reading your columns) who use any excuse to batter public broadcasting, like NPR or PBS. And what do you know? He does it again:

Isn't "public" broadcasting - funded to a large extent by our tax dollars, thus the whole "public" thing - supposed to afford us a wide variety of views on a wide variety of issues?

--And they don't? See my response below for a little more, but just to give you a taste, PBS shows a wider variety of programming than some organizations I can think of.

*SNIP*

We're shelling out more than $300 million annually in state and federal tax dollars for shows like "Charlie Rose" (name the last conservative you've seen yucking it up with Chuck), "Frontline," "American Experience" and "Nova" - all agenda-less programs, I'm sure.

Nova? Nova?!?! Jeffry, have you ever seen Nova?

This is also the same organization that has given Tucker Carlson his own show, have given those notorious liberals from Fortune their own soapbox and even lets left-wing John McLaughlin host a weekly show! The audacity of these people! Who needs 'em?

We do.

That's right Jeffry, people without cable (which only hits 75% of households anyway), or people who don't want to watch commercials every 8 minutes, or people who want to see Mystery, or Masterpiece Theater, or the State of the Union (or even better, the State of the State speech, since PBS bothered showing it.) or *gasp* Cosmos! PBS serves a great purpose, especially to those in the lower economic brackets.

So what kind of an agenda is PBS trying to forward? Here's an idea:

Maybe, just maybe PBS doesn't have a partisan agenda. PBS and NPR tend to draw fire from both sides of the equation, liberals say it's turning too Republican, and conservatives still hammer PBS with their "Liberal Media" sledge.

PBS appears to be going with the shows they think the community would benefit from or be interested in, from both sides of the spectrum. What a wild and crazy thought... showing something for the benefit of others. What will people think of next?

Well, since Joe Trippi has given his choice for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee, I guess the rest of the world is waiting breathlessly for mine as well (yeah right) ;-)

After much thought and contemplation... or is that much scotch and gin and tonics? .. I've decided the next choice of the DNC should be...

Zell Miller!
:-P

(Come on guys... I was just kidding! Put the guns down!!)

P.S. Besides, who hasn't wanted to challenge Chris Matthews out to a duel? ;-)

I got back to my apartment this afternoon after a good day, and was checking my mail when I got a letter from the university financial aid department. Foolishly thinking this was them telling me my loans were coming through with nary a problem I opened it up. Then I found out that the school has decided to revoke my financial aid because I "broke my contract to get a 2.0 GPA for the semester in all of the classes" I took.

Hmmm, that'd be funny except I got a 4.2 for the semester and made Dean's List for the second semester in a row.

Granted my independent study was an incomplete, but considering that the professor had to take medical leave because he came down with cancer, I figured everything would be OK. Especially considering I cleared everything with the financial aid department as soon as he took leave.

"No problem, this won't count against you," they told me that afternoon.

Their response today?

"Well someone must have lied to you. You have to re-appeal your financial aid status by giving us a letter from you, a letter from your professor (who is still out on medical leave) on why the class was an incomplete, a letter from the head of the department, two golden teeth from the dean of students, the right kidney of a university regent, oh and while your at it why don't you throw in the rights to your first-born and a draft pick to be named later!"

OK, so maybe I exaggerated the last five (including the draft pick) but there's always a problem with these guys. So tomorrow goes from walking the dog and relaxing before work to spending all day butting heads with the financial aid goons and their insidious leader Die-Rec-Tur.

As we see, it's just another day in paradise around here. ;-)

... "She's got big, brassy ones" in French?

Maud Fontenoy, a 26-year-old French woman, is starting her journey to row across the Pacific Ocean in a row boat! From Lima, Peru to Polynesia.. 4,900 miles!

What else can you say but... "you go girl!"

No sooner do I have my iPod Mini and start planning on saving up for that U2 iPod, they come out with their newest iPod. Finally they have a lower priced iPod that I can justify getting for my brother (who needs an mp3 player).

And they've surprised me with their newest Mac. Once I get my Dell laptop paid off this is coming up on the radar!

My mom and step-dad bought one of those new G5 iMacs for Christmas. Damn if that isn't the coolest thing either! Everything's worked into the monitor. Very sleek and stylish IMHO (and I'm not even a "mac person")!

Apple may not have much of a market share, but without a doubt they have some of the coolest equipment on the market! These things are so pleasing to the eye it makes up for not having any software or market share. ;-)

If you have a big dog, like I do (black lab-golden retriever cross), then you probably have problems if you try to move into an apartment. Since most apartment complexes only take pets up to 15 or 25 pounds, it's hard to find a decent apartment in a good part of town to move to (God knows I haven't been able to yet).

However, why not write a resume for your dog to give to apartment complex managers? Doesn't look like it'd hurt any.

Been reading Greg Payne's blog today, and read down to his predictions for the upcoming year. Now while I find Greg's posts interesting, it doesn't count when you change predictions to make yourself sound right. In this case he changed one thing in his post, he dumped Margaret Chavez being a candidate for mayor so he could add that David Alire Garcia (a columnist at the Albuquerque Journal) would remain a partisan hack.

Then he posts that Alire Garcia proved him right by refering to a column David wrote for the Journal at the beginning of the year about the Democrats, Governor Richardson and centrism. Of course he refers to Alire Garcia as a partisan hack again. But what he negelcts to mention is that he had to make a few, teensy, tiny alterations to his predictions to squeeze in this attack. Like it was magic that he made the prediction, and, like totally wow, it happened!

Come on Greg, if you're gonna change your predictions so you can "be proven right" and call someone a hack, then at least fess up about it.

Kinda wish I'd printed that screen out now...

It all sounded so perfect, 1:30 in the morning, a gin and tonic in one hand and my all new copy of Ju-On: The Grudge loaded in the DVD player. (Like I said, big weakness for horror movies)

Oh man, bad plan if I wanted any sleep this morning.

The movie was great, freaky but great! I haven't seen the American version yet but if it's freakier than the Japanese version was (like The Ring vs. Ringu was for me), then I'm not gonna sleep for a while...

Damn...

I could start at the beginning... I was born a very long time ago, I hardly remember anything about it.

*ba dah crash*

*crickets chirping*

Wow... rough crowd.

Hmm, how about this: I'm a 31-year-old, long time New Mexico resident (Hobbs, Albuquerque, Socorro then Albuquerque again), I'm currently in my second stint in college and I'd love to tell you where I work, but I can't because they might fire me ;-)

If you've read this far, then you might be asking "What are you interested in?" That's a damn good question and I'd love to tell you... as soon as I figure them all out. :-P But in that list we can include:

• Horror Movies
• Politics
• Music
• Walking my dog
• Listening to some Jazz
• Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (maybe there's hope for me yet) ;-)
• Iron Chef
• Reading Blogs (Quirky Burque is a favorite of mine!)

There are more, but I'll leave it at that for now (there are always new and exciting things to learn about, anyway!)