This Jason Mattera sounds like a pretty cool little dude. He’s the president of the Roger Williams University College Republicans who started up a whites-only scholarship fund. It was parody of course, and a great joke. My brother-in-law told me that they started raising the funds by having a bake sale where white males had to pay full price and women and minorities got discounts. That’s some funny shit. The whole racial relations thing really gets to me. I was raised to embrace MLK’s dream, that you can’t judge people on their skin color but you have to look deeper before you can determine whether you’re dealing with a dipshit or not. And it’s worked out well for me. Racism is bad policy. But this whole multi-culturalism, diversity program is bull. I was telling my girl last night that it’s leading right back to separate-but-equal. That’s the idea: people from different racial backgrounds are inherently different from each other and those differences need to be studied, recognized, and “celebrated.” That’s horseshit, I know it for a fact, and more people oughta be listening to what MLK said and less to what his carrion did with his successes. When I think to myself how I’d be different if I’d been born with black skin, the only thing I can think of is that I’d need a different haircut. Probably somewhere in between Mike Davis’ and Thomas Sowell’s, something even, low maintenance, and dignified. Pretty much what I’m going for now. A liberal multiculturalist would chastise me for being so simple-minded, for failing to grasp the complexities of growing up black in America. But all the kids in my neighborhood do all the same stuff I did when I was a kid, except they play baseball, which is probably more fun than exploring woods and cornfields. So it hurts me that here at the U of I we have segregated graduation ceremonies and other such nonsense. Multiculturalism, I spit on thee. But not literally, like the professor here who hocked a loogie (sp?) at a co-worker’s friend for attending a pro-Chief rally (in solidarity with the majority of the student body) a few weeks ago. I’m trying to find out his name, so I can go make fun of him. Maybe call him a goober. Get his left-wing multiculturalist ass out there in the private sector, where he might end up working for a black guy that didn’t have the patience to listen to multi-cultural excuses for failure and just went out, worked hard, and succeeded like people are supposed to do. That could be the basis for a sitcom, if it isn’t already.

And if you think I’m tooting my own horn a bit too loudly for having been raised properly and not being a racist shithead: screw you. I wouldn’t write this stuff if I didn’t think my opinions were right and that people shouldn’t think and act more like me than the worthless yahoos most of them are. If there were an emoticon for a fist with middle finger raised, I’d put it here. Q- How’s that?

Blues V. Dallas in an hour and a half. It’s a huge game, one of the few quality opponents left in our schedule, so a bellwether for our playoff chances. I’ll be in the Lou next week for Spring Break, and would like to put together a party to see the Blues/Ducks game on Thursday night at 7:00. Clear your schedules.

Donald Sensing has a whole lot of good content up today, the anniversary of GWB’s order to take a gamble and bomb the Baghdad restaurant where Saddam was reportedly eating dinner; and the subsequent crossing of the berm by the 3ID. Especially make sure to read this post by Sarmad Zangna, an Iraqi blogger who I hadn’t read yet, but have now added to the blogroll.

When the war started, I was sitting at my favorite watering hole, eating a cheeseburger and drinking a cold budweiser. Bush was on the tube and gravely announced that he’d given orders to invade Iraq. Some older dudes next to me were really pissed off about it for some reason and decided to give me a bunch of crap. After I determined that they were lying about being Vietnam veterans, I became unpleasant. Here‘s what I wrote:

Just as the ground war is getting underway, with MLRs and Paladin self-propelled artillery firing into Iraq, there’s an anti-war protest on the Quad. About 200 people or so were out there screaming and blowing on air horns. One dude had the stars and stripes upside down on a stick. I walked by on my way to get lunch and listened to what the gal on the mic had to rap about. I heard mythically Chomskyesque horseshit coming out of her cakehole. I didn’t really believe that Leftists refer to “the brown people” anymore, I thought that whole idea had been given up as too silly to be credible, that Republicans don’t like “brown people” for some reason and want to kill them. She said, [the Bush administration] is “making it really hard to be a brown person these days.” No shit! Damned if I’m not trying either. She had to have been an undercover operative of the VRC, it was just too laughable. After her, on my way back with lunch, a guy claiming to be an Army officer in charge of chemical weapon defense or something thinks our troops are unprepared and poorly trained, the chemical suits don’t work, and there’s going to be a lot of good people dying. Don’t think so. That guy’s speech didn’t get any whooping or hollering so afterwards, either to liven up the party or because they were out of material, it was into the “1-2-3-4Wedon’twantyourracistwar” chanting. Back to the little brown men theory of military engagement. Fools, unbelievable! I mean really, there’s an Arab in the cabinet. The Republican Cabinet. The Bush Administration. Dig? Your theory is broken. Get a new one. I refer you here, in case you can’t come up with anything yourself. For another anti-war-dude story, I had an unpleasant run-in with a couple of them last night. I was minding my own business, reading a paper, doing some homework, drinking a beer at my local watering hole and three dudes in their early fifties probably sit next to me. I chat on and off with them for a while, just regular dudes, I guess. After Bush’s speech and the war starts, they ask me whether I support the war, and I say that I do, and then they started to give me shit. The chickenhawk type of shit. “You ever been in war? War ain’t fun. You never seen your buddies legs get blown off.” Two of them claimed to be Vietnam Veterans, so I kind of help my tongue and just tried to ignore them. But after a minute or so, it became pretty clear that these dudes were just a bunch of ex-hippies who’d seen Platoon a time too many. So I asked them where their tour was and they admitted they hadn’t been drafted. Then I laid into them a little, got them to shut the fuck up and leave me alone, and after a bit of cruel abuse, they left without incident. But tell me this: how much lower can you get than lying that you are a combat veteran to score some points in an argument with a guy for supporting the soldiers? Not very, but we’ll see what comes up in the next few weeks. Wouldn’t surprise me if they were just in town for the protest today.

Thought out loud by Liam at 2:09:13 PM

What a load of jackassery. It’s one of the nice things about maintaining a blog for about two and a half very, very interesting years that I can look back and see what I was thinking as events were developing. There are a few entertaining blogs out there where the writer just talks out of his ass and regales the reader with stories and anecdotes, like What Green Tastes Like and there are lots and lots of bad ones. The easiest way to keep a good weblog (not that I have any standing to advise) is by mixing up the anecdotes and personal stuff like baby pictures with commentary on the news of the day. It’s all about maintaining content-flow and being interesting. Some people may not think it’s important or worth mentioning that there’s a war on with our friends in combat zones, or that a whale exploded on a city’s streets in Taiwan a month ago, and that the only topics worthy of discussion are which muscle group will be exercised on a given day, or how drunk I got with my friends last weekend. These people are dull crayons and will end up having jackassed half-opinions like those old dudes at the bar a year ago. I’m getting back to work.

Without further ado, here’s a picture of the newest addition to the family, my first nephew, born at 9:10pm on St. Patty’s day after putting my sister through five days of labor, Colin Gilbert Miller:

And here’s a picture of me holding the little dude:

And here’s the proud dad with young Colin:

Isn’t he a handsome devil? His hair rocks. All the nurses thought he was real cute.

Holy crap! VDH has his own website now. I found it by this insta-linked column about free health care. Go check it out. He’s my favorite essayist out there, and taught me a heck of a lot about the Spartans.

Good for him. Coach Q will lead Team Canada. I’d rather he be running the Blues as we make our playoff run, but at least he’s getting the respect he’s earned. And an opportunity to increase his reputation.

I heard on the car radio yesterday that the terrorist attacks in Madrid gave the Socialist party a 30% bump in the elections, ousting the Popular Party government of Aznar. SDB sums it up thusly:

The people of Spain marched in the streets on Friday.

Then they crawled on their knees into their polling booths on Sunday.

I hate to criticize the Spaniards for reacting the way they did to a horrific terrorist attack, but their reaction did give a clear indication to al Qaeda and other such groups that terrorist attacks are not only a legitimate but also a highly effective means of influencing democratic politics. That is a Very Bad Thing, and will inspire more death. Lots of discussion and linkagery to more at this post.

Gotta say, I’m even more impressed with Sockbaby 2 than I was with the first one. The editing is superb. Check it out. Johnny Cordova needs you. And that’s all I can say for now. But soon I’ll have some great pictures up here.

I call this an extraordinarily good deal for all parties involved. The Texans get a 3rd round pick from a free 6th round pick. The Cowboys get a solid backup quarterback at a low price. Drew Hensen gets a shot to compete to quarterback an overhyped franchise. The guy’s got enough talent that he can earn his way into the big bucks built into the contract if he gets playing time. And as well as Quincy Carter did last season, there’s no way Parcells is going to pass up an opportunity to win a few more football games if he thinks Hensen can do it for him. Just another reason to make it an interesting season.

I really hate spam. I get a lot though. Most of it traces back to when I pulled my credit report. Apparently the figure that if you’re insecure about your credit rating, you’re also insecure about your johnson. I’ve been trying my best to play their little games though, and unsubscribing to whatever I get that offers such a service, just for experimental purposes if anything. I got one tonight that actually required me to type in a string that was picture-encoded on the page, the sort of security procedures used to bust bots. But then it told me that my address wasn’t in their system. So I sent them this lil’ message:

I’ve gotten an unsolicited E-Mail from your organization. I do not want another. Your unappreciably intelligent unsubscribe page does not recognize my email address in your database. It is and I’d like it removed immediately. The email was addressed to , which leads me to suspect that your organization is playing funny games.

This leads me to believe that you are not worth the pain your mothers went through to shit you into this world, nor the effort I’ve put into unsubscribing from your unwanted marketing advances, nor the pollution that your foul breath creates with every exhalation.

Cease and desist from contacting me. Now, fucker.

I don’t think it’ll work, but I’m a lil tipsy and it was fun to vent a bit. Kudos to me for not threating death or bodily harm. I have no idea what to do about the spam problem. I was thinking about raising money to buy the spamlists, then spam the lists explaining to people what spam is and why it’s immoral to buy shit from spammers. Basically, it’s free to send a million emails, and so they need just a few suckers to buy their horseshit to make their money back. If I could spam the same people and explain that, then they might stop. The only people that would read the message would be those inclined to buy shit from spam anyways. Reach yer target audience, ya know? How to burn off these leeches without censorship? A tough problem.

Naturally, this story is horseshit. But it’s good horseshit, in that it’s likely to be translated and re-published by papers read by the enemy. No doubt Gitmo is not summer camp, but also not nearly as horrific as the enemy believes it to be. If it got out that things like this don’t actually go on there, and that medical treatment and food is quite good, then we’d truly be in trouble.

For those interested: here’s the Big Ten Tournament Brackets. Illinois plays Indiana tomorrow (since they beat The Ohio State University today), and then would face the winner of the Michigan-Iowa game, assuming we beat the Hoosiers.

SDB’s hiatus from writing was a great idea. Since he’s been back, it’s been nothing but platinum hits. On the top of his site right now is an outstanding and insightful article on the structural innovations in the Iraqi Constitution. Read it, and keep going. The article on politics and tuberculosis is also a must-read. Do a CTRL-F for “tuberculosis” if you’re in a rush.

Another quiz, and I don’t buy it:

schizoid

Which Personality Disorder Do You Have?
brought to you by Quizilla

Here’s some Internet Mental Health page on Schizoid disorders. Somewhat guilty of item 4 and sometimes 7, but none of the rest. Especially 3. Damn, I dig 3.

Took a quiz:

Which monkey are you?
Another pointless diversion from Bijouriel

Found it at Lost in the Shuffle

There was a massive, Bali-scale, terrorist attack in Madrid today. The Basque terrorist group ETA denies responsibilty. Close to 200 deaths.

Jeff comments on the Todd Bertuzzi cheap-shot that ended Moore’s season. Hockey used to be a game where the players would police themselves, and the retaliation for cheap shots could be pretty severe. Usually, if you lay a cheap shot on someone, the other team’s goon would catch up with you later in the game and knock out a few of your teeth. That happened once in a great blues game a few years ago. Scott Pellerin had his lip practically sliced from his face with the blade of a hockey stick. While he was having it sewn back on, Tony Twist pounded the snot out of the guy who did it, and Pellerin came back to score a goal. That was pretty much standard. You make a dirty play, and you’ve got to keep your eyes peeled for retribution the rest of the game. But it was never like this. Even goons have honor, and wouldn’t return a cheap shot with a cheaper shot. Sometimes, retribution was sublime, and beautiful. The greatest I ever saw was back in High School. I was in Junior High still, and playing hockey for the Kirkwood stars. I went to a Parkway South game with my bro and some of his friends to watch the really skilled players go at it. The game was against Oakwood, I believe, and one of their players had dislocated Brian Morgenthaler’s shoulder in a previous game. Morgenthaler was a highly skilled player for our team, and so it cost the team to have him down. In the game I was at, we’d get our payback. The payback was absolutely sublime. Jason Zubkus, a player who left South to play Junior hockey and went on to play for Cornell, had the honor. The puck was dropped, and Zubkus was on left defense. The player who’d injured Morgenthaler was at right wing with his head down, and right when the puck was on his stick, Zubkus was there with a square chest-to-chest hit that put the guy flat on his back. And he was out cold. For at least a half an hour. They put a tarp on the ice to lay the guy on and took most of his equipment off to get his blood circulating. An ambulance drove onto the ice and took him away on a stretcher. It was a perfectly clean hit. It was the way it should always be done. I’m sure the injured Oakwood player recovered fully. And hopefully kept his head up the rest of his career.

Update: Give ‘im a year. Yup.

I’m getting a lot of search engine hits for “citeseer is down.” As a public service, I’ll point out that while the NEC Citeseer has been down for a few days now, there is a citeseer mirror at Penn State. Hope that helps.

I was riding the elevator just now. People stick posters up in there to announce their talks and stuff. One of the posters was for Steven Pinker’s upcoming lecture. The other two speakers at the event are my boss, Dean Delia, and the Chancellor of the University of Illinois, Nancy Cantor. Cantor’s pretty unpopular with a sizeable portion of the student body and a large majority of the county residents in general. She’s leaving soon to become president and Chancellor of Syracuse University. Her unpopularity stems from her activist PC-BS-Liberalism. She’s something like a left-wing Johnny Appleseed, flitting across the country and sowing “progressive” seeds that might flower in the sandy soil of ignorant and illiterate hayseeds’ hearts. (Mixed metaphor anyone? Get yers!) She was at U. Michigan when their affirmative action program adopted the Points System that the Supreme Court ruled was unconstitutional, but only kinda-sorta a year or so ago. After her brilliant social experimentation there, she came to the University of Illinois where her most obvious agenda item was to retire Chief Illiniwek as our school symbol. This provoked a harsh reaction from the community. There are billboards rented out all over town that are painted simply, “KEEP THE CHIEF: RETIRE CANTOR” and other similar sentiments. She’s not so popular, in other words, and now that her push to retire the chief appears dead in the water, it looks very much as though she’s being run out of town on a rail, albeit to a higher paying job at a less prestigious university. So anyways, back to the elevator. The poster had pictures of Pinker, Delia, and Cantor. Cantor’s picture on the poster is identical to the one on this page. The mustache was thin, and separated in the middle. I swear to God almighty, it looked exactly like Mel Brooks as Louis XVI in History of the World, Part I. That’s it.

A few years ago, my friends Aaron and John started looking into becoming models. They didn’t see anything wrong with that idea. They didn’t see anything wrong with this. My mind has yet too be unboggled. And the more I look at that, the more one of those dudes looks like Aaron.

Hat tips to Dave Barry and his broken blog.