I’m getting sick of this. No, really, the whole contradiction thing when it comes to what foods are good for you and which aren’t. From one side, I’m told X foods are bad for you, eat Y foods. From another I hear A foods are bad for you, eat B foods. Problem is that the list each gives me pretty much cancels out the list the other gives. Any way I can survive, you know, without food?

As you may or may not know, I’m fighting it out with GERD right now. The cause? Unknown, though a weak gallbladder seems to have something to do with it (EF was at 19%, for those of you know what a HIDA/CCK is). So for the past two months I’ve been doing EVERYTHING under my power to completely change my life. I’ve cut out most meats (eating only the occasional fish); I’ve cut out just about every grain except buckwheat. I’ve cut out coffee, chocolate, citrus, vitamin C supplements, ice cream, sweets, cheeses, garlic, onion, red peppers, spicy foods… and these are only those I can remember! Was it hard? Yeah, at first, but it got easy afterward. It’s not always easy — temptation comes in many forms — but I’ve been disciplined enough to hold my mouth. My caloric content has, unsurprisingly, been lowered to probably around 1900 or so calories per day. And, for the most part, I feel good. Except, of course, for he occasional chest and throat burning.

Today, I went to my acupuncturist, since I decided that before cutting out my gallbladder I’d try to strengthen it. When I first saw her, she said that it looked as if my liver was too strong, and my stomach and spleen weak, which was causing all the heartburn. (And because they work in tandem, a strong liver means also, in my case at least, a weak gallbladder.) Today’s meeting, however, was our third, and she decided it was time for an intolerance and allergy test. Alright, I was game. We did the test, and it came out that I’m either allergic or intolerant to the following items: Acidic items, oat, vitamin B, coffee, birch, ragweed, bermuda grass, cow’s milk, and poison oak.

Obviously, I’m not about to eat any birch or poison oak, but let’s look at the list of foods: acidic items, oat, vitamin B, and cow’s milk. Keep those in mind as I continue.

She also recommended that I start eating yellow-ish foods, such as squash, pumpkin, and corn. and that I should avoid cold foods. The spleen hates cold, she says. “Try warm or hot drinks.”

Problem: I only like cold drinks. In fact, most of my food isn’t even cooked, it’s raw. And because I can’t really eat anything heavy, I tend to rely a lot on foods like smoothies and yogurt. Both of which are now out of the question. Oh, and did I mention I don’t like hot drinks? (I’ll make an exception for some teas, but it’s not so much that I like them as much as it is that I can stand them.) Quite literally, a third of my daily meals just went out the window.

As for the other foods — the corn, pumpkin, etc — I told her it wouldn’t be a problem, I’ll just add them to my salads. I then chose to share with her a little salad dressing recipe I’d cooked up which is just phenomenal:

3 parts olive oil
3 parts “balsamic” vinegar *
1 part honey
1 part turmeric
salt to taste.

* Balsamic here refers to the stuff you get at the supermarket for $3/bottle. If you’re able to get the real stuff — from Modena — that’s fine, though you may want to dilute it a bit with water or another vinegar, maybe red wine vinegar or even apple cider vinegar, though that’ll add an acidic feel to it.

“Oh,” she exclaimed. “You shouldn’t be having acidic foods.” I asked her what I should be using for my salads. “Maybe you can try some Thai peanut dressing, or ginger dressing.”

Alright, not a problem. I would simply have to research those. Not a problem. Really. Not a problem.

When I got home, I started doing a bit of research into what foods I should be eating and what foods i should be avoiding. That’s when I discovered that foods like corn, which I should be eating, are acid forming, which I should be avoiding. Also balsamic vinegar and olive oil are both acid forming, as are fish and eggs, but that’s something to keep in mind more than it is truly pertinent information.

I decided then to start researching salad dressing recipes. What could I have that didn’t have oil or vinegar? Turns out it isn’t either ginger or peanut dressing, bot of which contain not only oil and vinegar, but also garlic, which I have to avoid because it weakens the lower esophageal sphincter (LES. A weakened LES is the cause of GERD).

OK, so what then, eat the salad without dressing? Sorry, but it isn’t going to happen. I can bend my taste buds to my will just so far before the chef side of me, the one that harkens back to my family’s long tradition of people who are good in the kitchen, decides that it needs flavor in order to live. And I tend to agree with that side. I’ve already given up meat (which I like), and coffee (which I love), and chocolate, and onions, and garlic, and pepper, and spicy foods. I’m about to give up cold foods, which pretty much will bring my culinary satisfaction level from high to medium, but I’m not sure if I can continue giving up things without starting to suffer from malnutrition.

Now, I know, people will say “Well, if you look at it everything will kill you”, and that’s true. Difference is, will you allow it to kill you right now, or will you want stave off death for a few years? In my case, the GERD brings the possibility of an untimely death (following a life of chronic pain) a very real, very frightening possibility. But if I want to get better, what the hell am I supposed to eat?

Mood: Utterly, confused and frustrated. And hungry. Don’t worry though. I’ll figure it out. I’ll just have to do it during cold food withdrawals.

For months, I had been part of this group. I spent my time in the shadows, reading messages and learning, since there wasn’t anything I could really jump in and teach or help. Frankly, it was a bit of a relief, since I’m used to being the person who steps in and is instantly a factor in the conversations.

Don’t ask me why that is, it just is. Probably because I make it a point to learn by teaching.

As I sat there, reading, I learned. A lot. More than I could have ever learned by reading some web page (and I read a lot of them). More than I could have ever learned by listening to a lecture. More than I could have learned by asking a doctor. I learned about the personal struggles of some, their victories, and their frustrations. Their world became real to me, not because of knowledge, but because of emotion. I finally understood their pain, and I knew that, at least as far as I was concerned, they weren’t alone. Turns out many people with this condition are, and they’re afraid because they don’t know what life now holds in store for them.

But I never pitied them. Never. I empathized, I felt for them, and I prayed. In fact, with the knowledge I’d gained in this group, I started helping others in different forums, helping them see that their diagnosis wasn’t the end of the world, just the beginning of a challenge, that there was still good to come. And it felt good when someone would come back and tell me “Listen, your information was spot on, and I’m now on the path to feeling better because I followed your advice.”

That’s a really, really good feeling. It’s times like that when I wonder whether perhaps I should indeed go into the medical profession.

A few months after I joined, a message came up in the group: one of its members was having a problem with her daughter. The girl had gone off her ADHD medications and was engaging in self-destructive behavior, causing her mom to worry and the condition to worsen.

Now it was my time to give back to the group, even though it was off-topic.

I wrote her mom in order to talk to her about Dabrowski’s theory of positive disintegration. Based on what she had described, it seemed her daughter was at Level II, spontaneous disintegration, espressed in her case by both prurient behavior (possibly due to sensual and emotional overexcitability) and self-destructive tendencies (drugs, alcohol, and very likely suicidal thoughts; possibly psychomotor and intellectual overexcitabilities). Many of these overexcitabilities often cause people to be labled as ADD or ADHD, and stuck on medication to suppress these symptoms, when in actuality it’s just the mind screaming for proper stimuli. I explained in my letter that her daughter would do well to be evaluated by someone familiar with TPD, and bore my soul as I told her, in very detailed terms, of my own experiences.

The email never made it through the filters.

Don’t get me wrong, the reason was very valid: the email was not within the scope of the group’s intent. I had no problem with that, and totally understood. It was the other part of the letter which floored me.

See, it was with this letter than I introduced myself to the group. I told them that while I was not diagnosed with the particular condition, I had stuck around in order to learn. I thanked them for the knowledge given me, since I’d been able to help others with what I had learned. The response I received from the moderator was essentially: You don’t have the condition, therefore you shouldn’t be in this group. If you want to learn more and raise awareness, here’s a website.

Turns out I had seen that website before, and read it in about six minutes. It gave me a great intellectual overview of the condition, but it was devoid of all emotion, the root of all desire to learn. Then I was kicked out of the group.

I couldn’t help wondering about this, and I asked myself “honestly, when should I start caring?” Seriously, when is it OK for me to get into learning about issues on the personal level instead of the intellectual? Should I be as selfish as most people generally are (including myself) and be concerned with conditions which affect me directly? Too often, wealthy folks and Hollywood elites are lampooned for caring about causes only after something affects them, for example Autism, AIDS, Cancer, or Multiple Sclerosis. They’re called selfish and self-serving because they didn’t put their face out for that or some other issue when they were healthy. Yet, when someone genuinely goes out of their way to get to the personal level with an issue, trying to not just learn about the issue, but also to care enough to be stirred to action, should they be shunned? This morning I was watching the news, and a commercial came up about a walk to raise money for research into the causes of premature births. The organizer? A local news anchor whose twins were born four months early. How would she be perceived if she gave more than a passing rip had her babies been born at 9 months? Would she be seen as someone who truly cared, or seen just as another celebrity looking for a cause in order to get more of the spotlight?

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that some may fear that their suffering is being exploited for someone’s sick form of entertainment. You’re going through something completely life changing and possibly life threatening, and someone is there gawking, offering nothing more than their pity, or even worse offering bad advice which makes you feel weak or like if this is somehow your fault. But do you prevent that by shunning both the good and the bad, those who would gawk as well as those who could potentially help?

I realize the answer to this is very personal, and I don’t expect there to be a universal response one way or another. But I can’t help wonder: if you want people to really get emotionally involved in your cause, why wouldn’t you let them see the human side of things? Do you really expect people to be inspired to action by a pamphlet’s worth of information?

So here I am, left wondering. I still help those I can with the information I gained, but the loss of that resource was nothing short of immense. And I’m sad to say that I now find myself being less able to help those who come for help regarding that particular condition, not the least of reasons being because I no longer have a teacher, and frankly, I don’t have the time to do a ton of my own research. Maybe the onus is on me to go out and read up on this. I haven’t seen any local support groups, so that’s out of the question. And if I’m left to be a one-man army on this, without getting any sort of personal experience, would my help do more harm than good? That’s honestly my fear. For now, all I can do is pray. Maybe I can start something, start an organization or a web group, but given I don’t have the condition, would anyone really take me seriously? Probably not, and for good reason. There’s a joke that goes something like this:

A pig and a chicken are standing on the side of the road and see a billboard which reads “Bacon and Eggs: America’s Breakfast.” The chicken says, “Wow, isn’t it inspiring to be a part of that.” To which the pig responds, “Sure, it’s easy for you to say. For you it’s merely dedication. For me it’s total commitment.”

The selfish passion of someone who’s in the trenches, battling the monsters themselves will always be greater than that of someone whose only passions spawn from a non-selfish desire to help. One person’s fighting for their life while another is fighting for what the perceive to be a good cause.

For now I’m only truly welcome to learn if I’m committed, instead of just dedicated. And I’m still left wondering when I should start caring.

“Hello?” he says at what seems to be the top of his lungs. He continues, “Hey, buddy! How are you?… Yeah… Hey, that’s awesome. Listen, I was talking to…”

As he’s talking I figure something must be going on with either the phone, the road, or the person at the other side of the conversation because his voice is getting increasingly louder… and louder… And Louder With Every… WITH EVERY SENTENCE. It wasn’t too long before I simply had to cover my ears, just so I wouldn’t go deaf.

If this had been an isolated incident then I would simply presume that maybe there was something wrong with the cell phone. Or maybe the cell phone was just that good. After all, the car was very quiet, even though we were driving at almost 80mph down an asphalt road. But this wasn’t the first time I heard this person do this. I’d heard him do it indoors, outdoors, in cars, in soundproof anechoic chambers — everywhere.

Here’s what really gets me: he’s not the first person I’ve seen do this. Other friends have done it, I’ve seen family do it, and of course, I’ve seen total strangers doing it. Did I ever tell you about the time I overheard someone’s conversation two cars away?

Seriously, what’s the deal? Do these people believe that they have to talk louder on a cell phone because the receiver on it sucks? Do they normally only talk to almost-deaf people? Or do they just assume that since there are no wires you have to talk louder so your voice carries through the air? It’s like the kid who, after seeing all the other kids with cups and strings, “phoning” each other, brings two cups and and calls it a cell. “How does the sound go across?” the teacher asks. The kid gives a cup to her and yells into the other, “LIKE THIS!”

*Urgh* Anyway, that’s the end of my short rant. Sorry, but I had to get this out. Maybe it’s a Florida thing and you won’t be able to relate. You know, the whole old-people-crawling-here-to-grow-older-and-die phenomenon. Any readers in Arizona? You probably know exactly what I’m talking about.

This has been one really screwy week. I’ll start with last night and sort of jump around from there.

For a few weeks now, The Wife and I have been talking about rearranging the furniture in our apartment. While the setup we have isn’t all that bad, the desire for a home-office area has been a pretty strong one.

Currently, our home office area consists of a bookshelf, a desk, and two storage racks in the storage closet. Unfortunately, everything’s not all in one place: it’s strewn about the apartment, with the different items in very different places within the house, none of which are really easily accessible. Living in an 800′ compartment, this arrangement just screams I look nice, but I’m just sort of ‘here’.

The biggest problem with this arrangement is that it makes it hard to track some client-related materials which, by their lack of prominence, are costing me money in the long run. Not good.

As such, we’ve decided to rearrange the furniture in our apartment so that it is more business friendly.

The first step in all of this was to buy a better laptop for business use. As I’ve mentioned before, our 600MHz PIII Inspiron 8000 running Windows ME just wasn’t cutting it anymore. Mind you, it makes a great laptop for just taking somewhere and writing, so it’s not all bad (especially when I load VidaLinux (VLOS) on it), but it isn’t up to the task of doing things like running Money 2006, Word 2000, Excel 2000, WinAmp video, accessing a wireless connection, and running Firefox all at once. If those seem like stringent standards to you then sorry to inform you, but you’re obviously not a computer geek. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

We ended up picking up an Inspiron 1501 for about $1200. It came with a $300 discount, so we were fairly happy with it, and includes a AMD Turion 64 x 2 TL-50 (1.6GHz/512KB), 1gig RAM, 120gig hard drive, 9-cell (5.5 hour) battery, Microsoft Office Basic 2007, PC-cillin Antivirus (2 years, I think), Windows XP Home (no Media edition available in business computers), 2-year at-home service, accidental damage protection, and a car/air power plug. We figured that while this isn’t exactly a graphics and multimedia powerhouse, we don’t exactly expect to be playing World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade or anything nearly that graphics intensive on it, so it’s fine with us. (I might get Civ IV, but only for those long plane rides, and when I’m really really bored.)

In addition to the new computer, we needed to get a couple of bookshelves. This would give us more storage place for our (my) ever growing collection of books, as well as some of the customer-related materials. A couple of weeks ago went down to Target to pick up a couple of bookshelves which matched the bookshelves we already had (since we also bought those at Target) and picked them up on special for $15.00 each. Unfortunately, this was two weeks ago: after we bought them, the boxed bookshelves sat behind the couch, gathering dust until last night. I’ll come back to these.

The past couple of weeks at my job have been pretty stressful. With a software release upcoming, the job of the technical writer has shifted from documenting existing software, to keeping up with the constant last minute changes from all the programmers, to making sure he knows about the last minute changes so he doesn’t spend hours documenting something which no longer exists. As annoying as this sounds, this isn’t inherently bad: I enjoy the excitement, and since I actually like my work (most of the time), it’s not something I mind. Last week, however, things went from stressful to annoying: because of the quickly arriving deadlines, in order to get the job done (and get it done right) I had no other choice than to stay late every night, usually until about 10:30pm. (To put in in perspective, I normally work from 8:30am to 5:30pm, so the extra time was about 4-5 hours, depending on the night.) Add to that my weekend work time of 8 hours on Saturday, 4 hours the previous Sunday, and I’m sure you can tell last week was a pretty long week for me.

(By the way, if you’re wondering why I haven’t written all that much, this is the biggest reason why: I’ve been at work. A lot.)

On the bright side, I seem to have gotten a lot more work done from the hours of 5 to 10 than 8 to 5, which is why I got to thinking that maybe I should ask my boss to hook me up with a laptop. Heck, I can do most of my job from home anyway, if I can do it at night, then all the better: I hate working during the day, preferring instead to work when it’s dark. (The later, the better.)

Another bright side is that I got to watch a lot of sci-fi shows and movies via WinAmp (Shoutcast TV, actually): Lost in Space, The Matrix, Swordfish, War Games, The Day the Sky Exploded, Stargate SG-1, and a few others. While I’m not much of a TV person, the infusion of sci-fi was a welcome one. I needed to do something to relax.

As all of this was going on I was informed that my “uncle”, Berto (my maternal grandmother’s brother) had just passed away. He was the closest thing to a maternal grandfather I had, the man who taught my dad about the pizza business (the primary source of income for our family for the first decade of my life), and the closest thing to a father my mom ever had. My mom took an immediate flight to Puerto Rico when she found out, but the death was especially hard in light of recent events: her aunt (my grandmother’s sister), who she was also very close to, died in December. Here’s the reall scary part: all of them — my grandmother, her brother and her sister — all died of diabetes. Needless to say that this makes for a very uncomfortable reality for my mom, as well as for the rest of us: Puerto Ricans have something along the lines of a 25% rate of occurrence in diabetes, and even with drastic changes to our diet, there is still a very large possibility we’ll end up with the condition.

Anyway, so back to the job: Friday night I finally got where I wanted to get as far as documentation was concerned. I could have gotten further ahead by going in yesterday (Saturday), but decided that I needed to spend some time with The Wife. Frankly, I couldn’t have picked a better day: 75^oF, just a couple of clouds in the sky, and soft winds. The perfect Florida day. I got up early to go work out, then got to spend some time in the steam room, the sauna, and the jacuzzi. I was tempted to spend a bit of time out on the beach: the white sands and deep blue water were particularly inviting. But it was almost 10:30am by this time (I had started working out at 7am) and I wanted to spend time with The Wife, even if she hadn’t yet woken up.

While yesterday was fun — we went out to eat and went to a couple of places for fun — I was really excited about what we would be doing at night. Remember those bookshelves I talked about earlier? Well, the plan was that we would go ahead and build those, then re-arrange the furniture into whatever new configuration we decided. This is when things got ugly.

Now, a disclaimer: I suck at manual labor. SUCK. Badly. Harder than a Hoover. And I hate it: I hate building computers, I hate working on cars, and most of all, I hate — haaaaaaaate — building bookshelves using crappily written instructions. (I also hate computers, but that’s another matter entirely.) Nothing brings out my anger more than having to build something like a computer or a bookshelf. That’s because since I suck at it, I usually do it wrong. Seriously, I’m a pretty talented guy, but when it comes to stuff like this, I stink out loud.

So, three hours after I started, I finally finished the first bookshelf. Unfortunately, it was wrongly built, since all the shelves were upside down, and the bookshelf looked hideous. Frankly, I didn’t mind all that much — after all, they were going to be covered in books — but The Wife… she likes her style. So, in order to make her happy. I tried to take the bookshelf apart. This turned out to be a rather huge mistake, since cheap Chinese particle board doesn’t exactly take well to being taken apart. Before I knew it, the bookshelf had already broken. In frustration, I decided to help it along by destroying the rest of it with my mighty hammer.

Man, that felt good. It left me with a shattered, useless bookshelf, but man… that felt good. I should smash up stuff I’m angry at more often.

Scratch that. No I shouldn’t.

About an hour later — after I had cooled down some — I started building the second bookshelf. By now it was midnight, and I couldn’t get to sleep. The Wife decided to help me out, probably for my own safety. In about 30 minutes we got the bookshelf done. While we didn’t get to re-organize the house like I wanted, that little act alone was enough to give me a small measure of peace, enough to sleep, at least.

This morning I got up around 8:30am. The first thing I wanted to do is write a bit and catch up with my life. I have a number of blog entries I want to get out, but most importantly, I need to start working on a story I’m writing for a book I’m collaborating on with other 9Rules members. Seeing as I’ve also been chosen as/picked up the role of managing editor (I guess) I have to get a few things moving with the book. Last thing I want is to see a project like this fall to the way side because of laziness and excuses.

With that I’m off to do my life thing. Plans for today include buying a new bookshelf to replace the smashed one, cleaning up the house (which looks like a bomb exploded in it), upgrading to WordPress 2.1, and continue working on the 9Rules book project.

[Edit: During the process of moving the second bookshelf so I could clean up the remnants of the first, that one, too, broke. I really, really hate this.]

1) Until the sixth episode there are only, like, 4 black people on the show. The two that are male don’t show up until the third episode AND THEY’RE BOTH IN FRACK’N JAIL! Is there a message here? Do we have fans of The Bell Curve on the writing staff or something? (By the way, the other two are a religious leader — of course — and a delicate little thing up on the bridge, with a forehead so big it would require its own expeditionary team to map it.) Also, in the first season, what’s up with all the fat people? I mean, they’re all in jail, except for one guy, who turns out to be a total jackass, bullying people around. Seriously, I’m expecting they’ll have an episode shot entirely within the confines of the fleet’s Weight Watcher’s ship, where all the morbidly obese individuals are running arou… wait, morbidly obese people don’t run around. They probably have jump-capable mopeds, though. Anyway, so here’s my first complaint: lack of diversity.

2) About the floating jail: who the hell would endow a floating jail with light-speed capabilities!? Second, why did they keep that ship, or rather, their people? Dump them off into one of the non-jump ships, fill the boat with a bunch of kids from one of the non-jump capable ships, and let the criminals to their fate.

3) I hate the intro to the show. Haaaaaate it. It’s the most uncomfortable beginning in television, by far. Every episode starts with the words “Previously on Battlestar Galactica”, then the story of how the Cylons invaded and the humans were kicked out is shown. As text. Then, clips are shown of previous episodes relating to the upcoming episode. Next, the show starts, for about 5 minutes, Then, the opening credits are played, followed with a preview of the upcoming episode. Finally, 8 1/2 minutes later, the episode finally really begins.

Seriously, this is — BY FAR — the Most. Annoying. Intro. EVAR! I mean, obviously some evil genius (a Cylon?) sold them on taking an independently good concept of a preview of the last show or shows, tacking on to it another independently good concept by showing a bit of the show before the actual intro in order to aid success, then tacking on to that the incredibly stupid concept of showing an incoherent preview showing us what we’re about to watch, convincing them that this would somehow be a great idea (After all if one is good, three must be great!) Unfortunately, this turned out to be an incredibly stupid idea that could have only been made more worse by adding to the end of the episode both a recap of what we just watched and a preview of the next show.

Mind you, I’ve only seen the first season, so I pray to the Lords of Kobol (They pray to Y2K programmers?) that they patched up the intro in later seasons. Let’s see, how about this:

- Say “Previously on Battlestar Galactica”‘
- Show the clips of previous episodes which relate to the upcoming one;
- Start the theme song, displaying the show story (without text this time) and opening credits
- Nix the preview of the upcoming episode. That’s like showing me a recap of the show at the end of the episode.

Alternately, they could replace the whole “Previously” part by including that within the intro song, where the clips of the episode we’re about to watch currently reside, music and all. This opens up the space for the whole suspenseful introduction thing they’re so fond of.

Total start time, about 3 minutes. [Addendum: I just finished watching season 2 -- not to be mistaken with season 2.5 (?!) -- and they clean this up. Now the intro is much better, although they could still get rid of some elements, like the preview of the upcoming episode which is useless when you don't understand it and frustrating when you do.]

4) Regarding the women: What the hell is up with the casting crew picking only women with mouths that would make Sailor Moon jealous?! Seriously, those mouths are HUUUUGE! And the lips, hell let’s not even talk about those.

Separated at birth, or did they just go to the same plastic surgeon?

A picture says all that needs to be said, anyway.

There are only two ladies on the show which don’t fall into this category (only “one” who would actually count as pretty), and both of them have the cute-without-trying thing going. I’m sure BSG fans can guess who I’m talking about.

5) Cravings: For some reason, every time I watch this show I want to smoke a cigar and drink. Can’t guess why…

6) Props and sets: My biggest complaint about this show — honest to the gods complaint here, not just rant — is the lack of imagination on the part of the staging crew: American mid-west style cities (at least the close ups), 17th century galleons, suits and ties… Considering human cultures on this planet, all at the same time, couldn’t come up with similar style architecture or clothing, the thought that some other culture, light years away and thousands of years separated from us, could possibly have identical clothing — even if they came from essentially the same heritage (sort of) is simply absurd. Yes, I know — suspension of disbelief for the sake of story/relateability. I understand that. However, this isn’t a complaint against just this sci-fi, this is a complaint against almost all sci-fi shows, which for some reason feature rather homogeneous human cultures, even across the vastness of time and space. The only show I saw with a bit of a difference here was Babylon 5. (Some Star Trek episodes also offer alternative cultures, but they’re always cultures which are somehow disconnected from the rest of the human species.)

7) Storyline complaint: While the overall story of the show is pretty good, I’m left wondering as to why just about every frack’n interpersonal conflict in the show is caused by an aparent epidemic of pathological dishonesty. Seriously, at least half of the show’s conflicts could be easily and non-violently resolved by the simple act of telling the truth. (I’m talking to you, Mr. Baltar!)

What’s up with all the papers, picture frames, cards, CD’s, etc. being made into octagons? It’s like these people have a love for corners, so they decide to stick eight of them on everything. I know they wanted things to be different, but seriously, there are other, more important things to worry about here, like, oh I don’t know, neckties? Like, why do they even exist? Or 3-piece suits, for that matter? In fact, it seems an awful lot of today’s Earth technology has made it into their hands.

9) The camera work, was it done by someone who just finished taking their Parkinson’s medication? I’m all for equal opportunity and all, but if I get motion sickness any time I’m watching the show then we have a problem.

10) Frack. Frack frack frack frack frack. That’s a replacement cuss-word the show uses in place of… well, I’m sure you can guess which word is replaces. Hint: it sounds like frack. At first it’s cute and funny in the “hee hee, I said a bad word” sort of way. Then they started using it everywhere, to describe everything. After that it got really annoying.

11) A lot of the story had me thinking “Is it just me, or did I see this in Star Wars?”

12) Editing mistakes: The first season is replete with major mistakes that made it on air. The biggest of these is on episode 2 of disc 3 (of the first season): at about the half-way point in the episode, the Boomer that’s on Caprica starts coughing for some reason. They show her for about a full second, just sort of looking at something behind the camera while the coughing is going on. Too bad she’s not coughing. After that, she starts saying something and suddenly you see this big dark spot form around her mouth, like she’s an old car leaking oil into the exhaust or something. If you look closely, you can see why they did this: her lips don’t match, at all, in any way, shape, or form, what she’s actually saying. When I first saw this I thought there was a problem with my television. Nope, it was the show alright, unless I was watching a reeeeeaaallly faulty DVD.

13) Story element complaint: At one point you can hear Major Adama tell one of the crew that unlike in previous cases, the “rumor mill’s right on this one.” Uhm… don’t know if you noticed, my dear Major, but the rumor mill’s got a fracking good record. In fact, the rumor mill seems to be just as good as prophesy in stories like this: all prophesies come true exactly as predicted, RIGHT NOW.

Ok, so enough of my complaints. Is there anything I did like? Actually, yes. A lot, which is why we kept watching.

1) I like the way they work on issues like torture (waterboarding, specifically) and, from what I hear, suicide bombers, taking one side of the issue at a time, instead of trying to teach something to viewers by taking both sides. Other topics of interest include the Atheism vs. Deism debate, and whether we allow ideas to harm us, much like today’s fear of terrorists-among-us.

2) I like some of their more innovative story aspects, like the use of real-but-imaginary enemies. These allow

3) The music: By far the best part of the show has been the phenomenal music. Frankly, this is some of the absolute best, most innovative music I’ve ever heard on a television show. Lots of minimalist aspects as well as properly placed dissonances in contexts you normally wouldn’t expect them in. [Addendum: The music gets even better in season 2.]

4) Cliffhangers: this show looooooooves cliffhangers. In fact, it was a great cliffhanger at the end of the first season that made me want to watch season 2. [Addendum:... and a cliffhanger at the end of 2 that has made The Wife and I almost desperate to watch 2.5.]

Finally, I think the overall story-line is great. Unfortunately, individual episodes in season 1 don’t actually have very distinctive elements. In other words, I wouldn’t go back and say “this was my favorite episode.” Yes, there was a beginning, followed by conflict, followed by resolution, but unless the show is watched in context it is really hard to spot that. The second season, however, corrects this, however, and makes the episodes much more interesting individually, as well as within the overall story arch.

Personally, I plan to buy the series, but it’s not a priority for me (so not any time soon), since it’s not something I can watch just one episode of and really be satisfied: I need a whole weekend to devote to just watching the series, or I would have to watch it sequentially over a period of time.) In this aspect, the show is a lot like Farscape and Babylon 5, both of which featured long-term stories and where the science fiction played secondary to the storyline, instead of being the main feature. Both of these shows were loved by fans (including myself), even if they weren’t as melodramatic as BSG.

My recommendation is that if you love sci-fi, buy yourself a copy of the show (BSG: Season One, BSG: Season 2.0 (Episodes 1-10), BSG: Season 2.5 (Episodes 10-20)) — you can even buy individual episodes — or borrow it from a friend, then dedicate a weekend to watching the thing. Repeat for seasons 2, 2.5, and whatever else. (I’m presuming here that you’re like me and either don’t have the Sci-Fi channel, or don’t have the time to watch television at a prescribed time and prefer instead to just buy your shows.) If not interesting in watching, then at the very least buy the soundtrack. (BSG mini-series, BSG: Season One soundtrack, BSG: Season 2 soundtrack; you can listen to clips via these links). You’ll thank me later.

For now, while I wait for 2.5, I’ll keep myself content by watching my latest acquisition.

While not a condition I’m prone to, as you can tell, yes, I am mad. Infuriated, in fact. I’ll start from the beginning so that by the end you’ll know exactly why.

About a year ago, my sister and Gary started having some major marital problems. For a long time, we (the entire immediate family) had known that Gary had a number of control issues with which he hadn’t yet fully come to terms. These mental issues caused him to exert a large amount of control over the actions of his family. including my sister and his daughter.

Like in many of these cases, much of this control was manifested in the form of religious fervor and belief in God. Unquestioning spousal obedience was demanded (under the guise of submission*) and many generally innocent traditions held by my sister were denied her, such as having a Christmas tree in the house. (Trick-or-treating was also not allowed, but that is more generally shunned by mainstream Christians, anyway, not just extreme fundamentalists.) In her attempt to be a good wife, however, my sister agreed to his rules. attempting to take them as her own.

* Side note: On Submission
Now, understand: submission isn’t a demeaning word. It’s a power word, since being in submission often grants you power. For example, when you get stopped by a law enforcement officer for speeding, you should be submissive. This will, in turn, often allow you to have power over the officer in that there’s an increased chance he’ll let you get off with a warning instead of a ticket. (This doesn’t generally apply to motorcycle officers, by the way.) Likewise, when you’re submissive to an authority figure, it usually results in the authority figure giving you what you want, such as knowledge (if it is a teacher), or attention (if it is a parent or a partner). Submitting to someone doesn’t make you their carpet. In fact, in many ways, the person you submit to will, in the proper context, end up becoming your servant. (The greatest leaders are the greatest servants.) Not understanding this important fact has led many couples into dangerous waters, since often the husband sees his wife’s submission to him as pass from responsibility and the wife often sees it as a bonding rope with which her hands are tied. It is this last wrongful interpretation which has given submission such a bad rap.

This attitude is what she took for six years of marriage. This included bad times — such as when they at one point declared bankruptcy, precipitated by Gary’s attempt to start his own motorcycle detailing business (he knew nothing about running a business, per se, but relied on knowledge of the trade, unwilling to truly submit himself to anyone in order to learn) — and good times — such as when they started going to the gym, when my sister lost a large number of pounds and Gary gained 20+ lbs of muscle (he was a very skinny, little white guy before then).

In the early part of this year, my sister decided she had had enough of Gary’s control issues. Part of the issue was her weight loss. Since she lost the weight, she started becoming attractive, too attractive for Gary’s taste, since she started getting looks from other guys. Gary would accuse her of flirting whenever she even so much as talked to another guy. Another part was the fact that my sister has never been someone who will allow herself to be walked on for too long, and over five years had already been too long. One day, she decided to move out of the house, since she felt she could no longer live there.

As happens in such cases, where someone feeling repressed escapes the situation from whence the repression was taking place, my sister decided to take full advantage of her newly-found freedom, most of which involved going out with friends. This, of course, wasn’t the wisest of moves from various perspectives, since many of her new-found friends were over 10 years younger, and had about as much life experience as the average house cat. Included among these new friends were various male friends. This last item didn’t bode well for Gary since he took it as a sign of infidelity, despite my sister’s claims to the contrary.

For the record, one of the issues which always bothered me was Gary’s unwillingness to see a marriage counselor. He claimed there were no problems, or that problems should be solved by them, and that was that. (That he needed counseling had been told to Gary before, that he needed to handle his personal issues via counseling. When one person tells you you’re a horse, don’t believe them. When another unrelated person tells you you’re a horse, laugh it off. When a third unrelated person tells you you’re a horse, put on a saddle.) Nevertheless, a while after my sister moved out, Gary finally decided that it would be in his best interest to seek counseling. Being as religious as he was, he decided to seek help using his church’s programs. Sadly, the counseling turned out to make problems worse, since my sister still didn’t feel she could yet face Gary again, even in a counseling setting, and because a counselor at his church had Gary convinced that the only possible reason my sister would be going out with guy friends was because she was screwing around. (This is why I don’t trust most counselors, church counselors least of all; too often there is some sort of hidden agenda or bias, and the person taking the advice is often in too susceptible of a position to question it.)

After a short period, for the sake of her marriage, my sister stopped going out with guy friends. She continued going out with girl friends, since she still felt this her right, even after almost six years of not being allowed to do so. Still, this move was enough for Gary to finally agree to sit down start communicating, and to dump the counseling.

While my sister didn’t move back with Gary, the fact that they were communicating was taken to be a good sign by the family. It wasn’t all that long before they started dating again. After a little while, she even started spending the night over there. While they had their ups and downs, it looked as if the relationship was again coming together. With this as a base to build upon, my sister decided it was time for them to have counseling together, as Gary now wanted. She decided to tell him that it was time. Unfortunately, just before she told him this, Gary decided they should simply get divorced.

Side Note: On Divorce
Here’s where I started to get seriously angry. I hate divorce. I think its way too easy in this country and is, in most cases, the coward’s way out of what’s supposed to be a lifelong commitment, a path taken either by those too lazy to work their problems out, or by those who have alterior motives they value higher than their honor. In general, divorce is the path taken by weak people who don’t have enough backbone to stick with the marriage through the “worse” part of the “for better or for worse” vow. (This statement doesn’t apply to cases where either adultery or spousal abuse is present, both of which are perfectly viable reasons to end a marriage. Of those, only the abuse is one which can’t generally be worked on; adultery can, painfully, still be worked through. I highly admire those couples who can work even through adultery to stay together.)

My sister — and everyone else — was floored. As it turns out, Gary had started to date another woman. And she had moved in. As he described it (to my mother, of all people), this woman made him feel special. She told him things about him, positive things, made him feel important and special. “You mean the same kinds of things used to tell you,” my sister told him during a confrontation, “before you had any muscles, when we were still bankrupt and eating Ramen for days at a time? After your businesses had failed and we almost lost the house? What happened to all those times?”

After the initial shock wore off, my sister decided to hire a lawyer to handle the paperwork. Of course, Gary couldn’t understand why she needed to get a lawyer for something as simple as a divorce (?!?!), and got fairly angry at the fact. I guess he didn’t think his cunning plan all the way through: they don’t have a pre-nup. It was at this time that Gary decided he needed to take this fight to another level: psychological warfare. Gary wanted to make sure my sister felt as he did, to intentionally inflict upon her the same pain she unintentionally (by her foolish actions) inflicted upon him. (These were his words — again, to my mother — almost verbatim.) Revenge is indeed a dish best served cold.

Throughout all this time, the biggest forgotten factor was their six year old daughter, my niece, Belle. The Wife started observing Belle and started to notice a number of behaviors which in later years may manifest themselves in very bad ways. Specifically, much of the way Belle handled seeing mommy move away from daddy’s house (as she now calls it) was by calling more attention to herself by various means. In addition, she started becoming much more dependent on external emotional encouragement and support. This was topped off by her new defiant behavior, especially strong after she would spend time with her daddy, and his new, live-in girlfriend. Unfortunately, Belle would become a pawn used by Gary to intentionally hurt my sister.

A few days ago, Gary decided to take the hurt one step further. When Gary came to drop off Belle after her weekend stay over at his place, Belle excitedly told her mommy, “Mommy, mommy, come meed daddy’s new friend.” Gary had apparently decided it would be a good idea to bring his live-in girlfriend, the one he’s having an adulterous relationship with (after all, they’re not yet divorced) over to my parents house. Needless to say this was devastating to my sister.

Many times my sister has thought about taking the same sort of revenge on him, bringing one of her male friends over in order to make him jealous, but all through this reason has prevailed. My sister, with my mother and father’s help, has been strong enough to quell the hand of temptation, and has instead taken the high road when dealing with this piece of human refuse.

Many times I’ve heard it told, “God does not make junk.” God may not make junk, but some people sure do a fine job at making themselves junky. Gary has made himself nothing but an adulterer, a coward at its lowliest. Napoleon Hill said it best in Think and Grow Rich: a man who is not true to his wife cannot be trusted.

The final straw, the one that made my immensely patient mother finally declare what a hypocrite Gary is, came today. When my sister went to pick up Belle from Gary’s (and his whore’s) house, Belle ran up to her and excitedly told her, “Mommy, look at the Christmas tree!” In six years, Gary had never allowed a Christmas tree at his house, condemning it as anti-Christian and not part of the season. I guess it just takes the beckon of a pretty whore, for a pussy whipped, yellow-backed, dishonorable, cowardly loser to drop all principles and conform to that whore’s desires. All my sister could reply with were the words “Six years, and I never got a tree.”

Now, all throughout this, I have kept quiet to everyone except The Wife and my mom. I have kept my nose out of this whole ordeal, never once telling my sister what a fool she was for doing obviously provocative and stupid things during her initial separation, or Gary what an absolute worm he is for being such an incredible hypocrite: demanding my sister conform to his religious beliefs for six years, then conveniently shedding them when his whore decided they don’t suit her tastes. She’s rectified her ways. and even apologized to us for the way she was acting. As for him — well, self-righteous, pampas cowards don’t tend to apologize, so I don’t expect it. This is why every time I’ve even so much as heard his voice, I’ve simply walked into a room and closed the door, lest I hear his redneck, illiterate, cowardly voice. This rant has been my first — and possibly my last — attempt at blowing off steam. Considering the guy has basically just dishonored my whole family, it may be about time I stop holding back and simply tear into him. Psychologically speaking, of course, since physical involvement in any event is reserved for self-defense only. I’m a very patient guy, and I don’t anger easily. (Annoyed, yes. Angered, no.) Right now, I’m very angry, and patient as ever.

Alright, now, if you finished reading this whole thing, what do you think? Is there any advice you can offer my sister, or me for that matter (other than “calm down, cool off, don’t do anything stupid”)?

“Which Ninja Turtle are you?” ” What city do you belong in?” “How strange are you?” “Which member of the A-Team are you?” “Who’s your daddy?” “Who’s your mommy?” “How Paris Hilton-esque are you?” “Which mass murderer are you?” “What color do you taste like?” — AAARRRGGHHH!!!

Now, I like taking these tests and all — don’t ask me why — but most of these fall under the “just plain horrible” category, which means that they’re actually a form of mental vampire or sucubus trap, so if you take the time to take them your IQ falls 20 points and you automatically begin drooling.

Here’s the cool part, at least from a Web-page owner’s point of view: at the bottom of every single one of these tests, there’s always a link leading you to the test, which I’m sure is great for PageRank, provided Google even spiders MySpace. (I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t. Google wants to organize all the world’s information, but MySpace is where they probably send their spiders to die. It’s like, if you’re a bad spider then *bam!* off to the MySpace Gulag, where you’ll spend the rest of your miserable, Web crawler life. I’m sure it’s a horrible death.)

You know, maybe I should write up a test like this. Maybe something like, “which one are you, a Ninja or a Pirate?” And I could write up questions like “Pick which one best describes you: (a) You usually surprise people because you can sneak up behind them with the silence of a church fart, or (b) People often tell you “Oh, I was just thinking about you,” and always just happen to know when you’re within a mile from them.” Heck, with the way some of these tests are built, that could be the only question and it would be enough to get me into some MySpace profiles, just so long as I put a funny picture associated with the result. No picture, no linking. Really, the only thing stopping me is that I don’t really know much PHP or JavaScript, and I’ve forgotten most of the HTML I knew (save for the basic stuff I use to make this page). Maybe there’s a test generator somewhere on the Web. (“Which personality type test are you…?”)

Another thing I noticed about MySpace pages: most people — wishing to express their individuality and show the world how unique and special they are — don’t stick with the basic theme. That’s all well and good. Heck, I’m a big proponent of individuality. The problem is that 99% of all MySpace themes suck. And I don’t just mean they suck in the put-a-straw-in-your-mouth-and-suck sort of way, I mean that these things give Hoover a run for its money. It’s like they could pick up bowling balls from the carpet just by their shier suckyness. Just open the page, and *sluuuuurrp* “whoa, why is all the furniture flying towards me?” Seriously, a depressurizing cabin in outer space doesn’t have the sucking power of some of these pages. Take this dork, for example. What the hell is up with having translucent text and images, with virtually no opacity, then sticking a picture of a yellow Ferrari in a high-contrast color photo as the background?! The only possible explanation I can come up with is that this guy just doesn’t want anyone reading his page. That’s it, nothing else. It’s like this guy couldn’t figure out how to use the “make profile private” button, so he decided instead to make his page totally unreadable to anyone, including himself. (This wasn’t the first instance of opacity abuses. I’ve seen many, many, MANY more.)

Now, I wish this guy had the worst page I’d seen, but no: although his page is horribly stupidly designed, it’s not as eye-gougingly hideous as most of the pages I’ve seen. Seriously, if you want a good laugh, just go to MySpace, click “Browse” and start clicking around. I guarantee it won’t be more than 1 minute before you run into some of the butt-ugliest, sucktastic Web pages you have ever seen. Remember Angelfire? Well, it’s worse than that. The only thing I can possibly compare it to is watching a retarded bear at the circus. I mean, you wanna laugh, ’cause he’s riding on the tricycle and everything, but you feel bad because the bear’s retarded, and you just want to say “Just… stop it. Please. Leave it be.” That’s the same way I feel when I see some of these pages, like they were done by retarded circus bears.

Please, people, if you don’t know how to design, grab a template or something. Hell, pay someone $10 to make you a theme, or better yet, just keep the basic theme and pay attention to little things like page widths (because nothing sucks more than having to horizontally scroll to read a page because a picture somewhere in the page is too frig’n big).

Anyway, I’m done ranting for now. Just had to get that out of my system.

A few days ago, I got another email from the same person. This email was written in the same frantic style, making my head feel again as if it was about to explode. “What,” I thought, “could have possibly gotten into her?!” I didn’t actually ask, since I didn’t want to offend, but I couldn’t help think that some form of parasite had burrowed into her brain. I’ll admit, I’m being a bit anal about this matter, but c’mon: I’m a writer and an editor. It comes with the territory. (Note: I know, I know — I don’t edit this blog as much as I could/should. It’s not meant to be that professional anyway. Like it or not, that’s the way it is. Hypocrisy be damned!)

Yesterday, I was at my parent’s place. My younger sister, who has her own MySpace page and circle of friends, was sitting at the computer writing an email to one of her MySpace pals. Being the cyber-quidnunc that I am (sometimes), I looked over her shoulder to see what she was writing.

There it was again: the writing.

hey…didnt c u at Amp last night… tell mel i’ll be flying in at 12… i dont plan on staying up too late either… yeah, I feel old too, but at least u’re already doing what older people are supposed to do….lol….responsibilities!! I will definitely keep u updated…

It seems like the Internet’s spawned yet another lingo: MySpaceTalk.

MySpace has always been a bit of an enigma to me. In fact, I hadn’t heard of it until about a year ago, when someone told me that it was “like LiveJournal, but different.” Yeah, real descriptive there, buddy. Other than that, I’ve pretty much ignored it until recently, when I began to hear that a lot of people were using MySpace as a way of getting in touch with old friends. “That’s not a bad idea,” I thought. After all, MySpace has something like 75,000,000 subscribed users (or about 10% of all Internet users world wide, if you don’t account for the myriad of users with multiple accounts), so I’m sure at least a few people I know are probably there.

After looking around for a bit, I decided to take the plunge and open up my own MySpace page. I figured it could help me network by helping people who may be looking for me (and who can’t find me via Google, which has Gnorb.NET on the second page for the search term “Norbert Cartagena” after a few meta tag blunders I made with this site when I revamped it), find me. Furthermore, I figured I could use it as a technique to drive visitors to this site while still allowing them to comment on MySpace if they should choose. This one I’m still a bit unsure about, but I’ll see how it turns out.

The one thing I still have to do…aside from setting up my MySpace profile…is work on my MySpaceTalk cos that way i can communicate with people and seem like im all busy…which i am so dont bother me…j/k hahahaha…. loves ya!

Read the following sentences out loud:

• Google are buying Yahoo.
• Argentina have done well in the World Cup.
• Before yesterday, Microsoft were doing better in the stock market.

Odd, are they not? Read them again. Sound them out. Something isn’t quite right, is it? Now, compare them to the following sentences:

• Google is buying Yahoo.
• Argentina has done well in the World Cup
• Before yesterday, Microsoft was doing better in the stock market.

Which of these two batches sounds right? Anyone who paid attention to English in grade school would emphatically state that the second batch sounds right. Yet, this common sense grammar is increasingly being attacked and shredded to bits by the Internet media, bloggers and news soruces alike. This poor, deranged group believes that because an organization is comprised of more than one individual, it can rightly be referred to in the plural on a consistent basis.

Newsflash: This is wrong. Not just wrong in the “oops, I don’t know how to use a possessive apostrophe” sort of way, it’s wrong in the “All your base are belong to us” sort of way. It is an affront to the basic constructs of the English language.

So what would posses writers everywhere to abandon common sense and go around describing one country, team or organization as a “they” in order to be consistent when it comes to whether something is referred to in the singular or in the plural, to have it one way, all the time, every time? The problem here is that one of the basic laws of English is being violated: if there is one, you refer to it in the singular; if there are more than one, you refer to them in the plural.

Where does this nonsense come from? Why is Argentina no longer singular? Why is “Google are going to do something” being used in lieu of “Google is going to do something”? It’s an abstraction, plain and simple. The speaker (or writer) is shortening the sentence at some point by making one abstraction, and in order to not break the rule which states that you should not use both plural and singular when referring to the same thing, the writer instead elects to make another abstraction as opposed to correcting the sentence. Here’s what I mean:

The following paragraph shows how people would generally speak:

Brazil is expected to win the World Cup. Why, just recently, they beat Japan, who was playing poorly anyway.

Obviously, this is incorrect, even though the speaker can safely presume that the listener will understand the sentence as follows:

[The team from] Brazil is expected to win the World Cup. Why, just recently, they [the Brazilians] beat the [team from] Japan, who was playing poorly anyway.

In order to correct this sentence, Internet writers could have done the following:

Brazil is expected to win the World Cup. Why, just recently, the team beat Japan, who was doing poorly anyway.

However, instead of doing the common sense thing, writers (especially sports writers) have given in to the pressure of bad Internet grammar, and have opted to make a few more abstractions in order to shorten their word count while unifying the sentence structure. For example:

Brazil are expected to win the World Cup. Why, just recently, they beat Japan, who were playing poorly anyway.

This is obviously wrong. The writer, while keeping in tact the plural referencing within the sentence, is presuming that the reader will understand the following:

[The] Brazil[ian players] are expected to win the World Cup. Why, just recently, they beat [the] Japan[ese]. who were playing poorly anyway.

The problem here is two-fold. First, the writer is presuming the reader will make all the correct abstractions (and for the most part, the writer is correct in making this presumption). Second — and this is the most important — the writer is destroying the flow of the language. The sentence is almost unspeakable! In this case the writer is trying to make plural references universal, even though plural references obviously have no place in some arenas. Here are a few more examples:

• Canada: singular. Canadians: plural. Usage: Canada is doing better. The Canadians have gone all out this year.
• Iraq: singular. Iraqis: plural. Usage: Iraq is doing well in this year’s games. The Iraqis have already made an impact.

Now, there are instances when something that seems like a singular is actually correctly referred to as a plural. Examples::

• The Tampa Bay Lightning were not able to defend their championship status.
• The Miami Heat have just beaten the Dallas Mavericks!

“Lightning” and “Heat” serve as both singular and plural. (You’ve never heard of “Lightnings” and “Heats”, have you?) In none of these sentences, however, is it OK to eliminate the team name and keep the plural referencing.

• Tampa Bay were not able to defend their championship status.
• Miami have just beaten Dallas!

Contrast that to this:

• Tampa Bay was not able to defend its championship status.
• Miami has just beaten Dallas!

In all of these examples it is understood that the speaker is referring to the team associated with the city. Yes, the team is comprised of a group of players. Yes, the team is usually referred to in the plural. Still, only the second set of examples actually obeys the laws of English, and as such it doesn’t make much sense to eliminate the team name and still keep the plural referencing. For example, New York is only one city, and the team from New York is only one team. To say “New York are loading up on quarterbacks” is no more correct than saying “The New York Jets is loading up on quarterbacks.”

A pluralistic description of a team is due to the fact that most teams have pluralistic names: Bulls, Seahawks, Raiders, Hornets, Thrashers, Senators, etc. That’s fine, and if the team name is referenced then the team should by all rights be referred to in the plural. When the name is not mentioned, however, it is not OK to talk about it as if the team name was there.

The Miami Dolphins is going to the Super Bowl.

Man, am I ever glad the New York Times never decided to make that abstraction. For years, the laws of writing stated that if you spoke of something plural you stayed in the plural, and if you spoke of something in the singular, you stayed in the singular. Apparently, this is no longer the case.

This is wrong, plain and simple.

Flagrant violators to this basic rule of English include most blogs, most Internet forums, and most sport-related websites. I point out sports-related websites because there are cases, especially when it comes to large news outlets, in which both the correct and incorrect styles are used by different departments. Here are two examples from the BBC:

• “It is a style, though, that Ecuador have moved right away from.”
  (from http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/world_cup_2006/5093548.stm)
• “Microsoft has admitted it was late to spot the threat from the net.”
  (from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5086994.stm)

When a news source as respected as the BBC can’t even get its own act together, what hope do we have?

All in all, here’s what it boils down to: When referring to one unit, such as a sports team or a company, go ahead and talk in the singular, even at the cost of having to transition later on from singular to plural, but use common sense. When it comes to sports, if the team name is mentioned, you will likely need to use the plural. That’s perfectly OK. If only the city or country of origin is mentioned, please do the English language a favor and refer to it as singular. I’m pretty sure the team members wouldn’t mind. Finally, cut down the abstractions. English is screwed up enough as it is without any new nonsensical abstractions, so the less of those there are, the better it is for all of us.

[Editor's Note: Maybe I should reprint Strunk and White: Elements of Style here. I'm sure it'll help more than just one or two people.]

Depicting Muhammed in a manner that might be offensive is not only taboo, it’s not proper use of “freedom of speech.” But offending Christians by purposely depicting Jesus insultingly? Well if that’s not freedom of speech then I don’t know what is! Here’s exactly what I’m talking about: http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/003630.html.

In short, a Canadian newspaper, The Sheaf, decided to not run the “anti-muslim” cartooms out of “respect”, citing the moral high ground, then turned around and published what can be only described as pure filth and a slap in the face to every Christian: a caricature of Jesus giving felatio to a pig who tells him “it’s kosher if you don’t swallow.” (The cartoon was commenting on the relationship between corporations and Christians in politics.)

Got something to say about it? (I expect you should.) Just email The paper at editor@thesheaf.com. Again, that’s editor@thesheaf.com.

So here it is, THE “holiday-which-must-not-be-named” weekend. Maybe it’s just me, but I haven’t exactly found much opposition from people for wishing them a Merry Christmas. (I have, however, found too many Christians cowering to a fictional enemy and wishing people a “happy holiday”.) To be honest, the only times I hear about a supposed war on Christmas is from Christians (usually fundamentalists) fighting the “Mass Media”, Hollywood, or some other “principality”, or when people who think others would be offended tell me “you should say happy holidays, instead.” Mind you, these are people who celebrate Christmas. They’re just, you know, worried that some Muslim, Jew, or Hindu might be offended by wishing them a merry Christmas. *sigh*

(For the record, I spend more time with Hindus, Jews, and Muslims than most of these people (who are telling me to be “PC”) combined. But, you know, that’s beside the point. I should still, apparently, be politically correct, and deny my own heritage while celebrating theirs. Really, stuff like this makes me wonder what kind of self-esteem problems the PC crowd has, where it always thinks it should apologize for things like its religion — if any — or its race’s actions from 400 years ago.)

But why not just wish a happy holiday? (Christmahannukwanzaka? Wait, that excludes Muslims and Hindus. Damn! [That word was never more appropriate than now.]) After all, as the drones of wise-folks who flood our streets have made it a point to tell me time and time again, all religions are pretty much the same, after all. Mind you, I’ve never heard one of these people quote their favorite Sura, refer people to the Tanakh or one of the Sutras (other than the Kama Sutra, of course), talk to someone about their favorite book of the New Testament, or discuss the Catechism. Still, it their enlightenment on such matters is nothing short of amazing. Really, it speaks to their breadth of knowledge on the topic. “The true genius figures things out without needing to be taught.” Amazing.

Now, before I go on, I should point out that I’m not talking about truly learned and enlightened folks, like Pope John Paul II or Sri Ramakrishna (though I’m not yet sure I agree with Ramakrishna’s conclusions, I highly respect of what he speaks). I’m talking about the folks who simply make blanket assumptions without actually having taken time to study (not just talked to their friends and other like-minded folks about) the philosophies, theologies and ideas of which they speak.

Anyway, I don’t know why I got on that rant. I’m not thinking about anyone in particular, but I figured I’d write about something, and this seemed like just as good a topic as any for the moment. (And I didn’t want to write about the Bush’s illegal wiretaps, or the treason in the White House.) Frankly, I was probably wrong. Too bad.

Ok, I’m getting ticked just thinking about all this. I’ll shut up for at least a day or so.

Last edited 20 October 2005. — Here we go again. Another hurricane, heading our way. Really, this is getting ridiculous — and old.

A couple of days ago, I read the following headline on Fark:

God remembers that Tampa has never been directly hit by a major hurricane in the modern era, seeks to rectify that situation

Ok, pretty funny headline, especially since I read it Sunday while in Tampa. Apparently, Tropical Storm Wilma was at that time somewhere south of the Yucatan peninsula. (You know, where that comet struck 65 million years ago which wiped out the dinosaurs, as well as 80% of all life on Earth.) Due to some amazing atmospheric foot-work, that storm was (edit:and still is) predicted to head pretty much straight north, then take a sharp, 90-degree angle turn east, towards Tampa. Since nothing ever hits Tampa, this meant that Tampa’s surrounding areas should start preparing for another hit. Heck, just to be safe, even Tampans (pronounced “Tampons”, like that thing women use when they’re “not so fresh”) were being told to get ready, since this might have been the area’s very first direct hit in something like 900 years.

Key words: might have been.

Anyway, this morning, I wake up, walk to the living room, and as I’m getting ready for my morning workout, I turn on the TV. I just happen to catch the Channel 7 weather hottie person, Elita Loresca, talking about Wilma. To my surpise, she wasn’t calling it a tropical storm. She wasn’t even calling it a category 1. Oh no. She was calling this the strongest hurricane ever to develop in the Atlantic basin.

You should probably be made aware of the fact that this was at 5:00am, just as I was getting ready for my morning workout. When I went to bed the night before, this thing was just barely a hurricane. Barely! It had gone from a tropical storm to a category 5 hurricane with 175mph winds in less than a day. Talk about your wakeup calls!

What made this interestingsuck harder that a Hoover is the fact that the loverly Hurricane Wilma, (which was supposed to go towards Tampa, remember?), was still supposed to take a 90-degree turn, for no apparent reason, in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, and plow right into — no, not Tampa — South Florida. Sure, I’m glad it’s not hitting Tampa, but daing it, why couldn’t it just plow right into New Orleans or something? I mean, the city’s already a big garbage heap, so it’s not like it could do much more harm there.

Here’s a question to ponder: does God hate Florida? Seriously, I mean what — aside from Disney’s gay-pride day, Guavaween, the debauchery of South Beach, the 2000 election, ’72 Dolphins, Malcolm Glazer’s deal-with-the-Devil for John “Chucky” Gruden, the 4-year drug parties known as FSU and UF, a crappy public schools system, that new gun law, Pat Buchanan, Bubba the Love Sponge, FantasyFest, Bike Week, slot machines in Broward county, every strip club in Dale Mabry, Ybor City, Hollywood, and everything that Key West represents — did we ever do to deserve this? Gees, just because Florida looks like a huge wang doesn’t mean we need to get screwed over and over, you know!

Here’s what really gets to me: Tampa’s gotta be the luckiest city on the Florida coast. The latest predictions have the hurricane hitting Key West and sweeping through South Florida. (Wang. Tip. Get it?) Tampa? Oh, they may get some clouds, maybe even a little wind and rain. Us? Why, we’re scheduled to be off the map in something like three days. (“Good bye, and thanks for all the fish.”)

Daing it, why did I move here? Why didn’t I stay in Tampa? Having lived there for the better part of my life, I have to say that I’d only feel threatened by a hurricane in Tanpa if they’d bus one in, give it a rifle, and tell it I was talking smack about its mom. Heck, even though Tampa got skirted by Frances in 2004, it still wasn’t exactly anything to write home about. (Literally; I was at my parent’s place in Brandon when Frances was going on. Nothing. Worth. Writing. About.)

At any rate, here’s hoping this one does something spectacular, like navigating under the state, never touching land, and floating off safely into the Atlantic. In other words, I’m hoping for a teaser.

Yeah, right.