October 8, 2001
The home of the Brave??
That's the last line from our National Anthem. And although there are many very brave people in this country, not everyone is all that brave. For example, Sunday night the city of Medford, Mass held a fire works display to celebrate the opening of a new school. Well, it seems the folks in neighboring towns were not clued in on the display and since we had just begun bombing Afghanistan, folks got a little out of hand. The local police forces received numerous calls from frightened residents who thought they were under attack. Under attack?? If you were going to attack the United States, would you focus that attack towards Malden or Somerville, MA? I kind of think not. Everyone knows that the key to bringing down the United States is Fitchburg, Mass.

Speaking of brave, seems our celebrities have the same thoughts as the folks in Malden. The Emmy awards were cancelled yesterday. The official reason was that is was not appropriate to have an award show considering the attacks. And that might have been a believable reason, except that many of our TV celebs were already forsaking the red carpet walk into the Emmys instead planning to sneak in the back door. The participants in the awards were given the choice of walking up the red carpet, with the bleachers removed for security reasons, or going in the back way. Nearly 3/4 of them decided to use the back door. Fortunately, the whole thing was cancelled and the cowardice of the TV folks was not exposed.

October 2, 2001
Are we a bunch of ninnies?
I have been seeing on the news people buying gas masks by the arm full. Why? Are you going to run around your life wearing a gas mask wherever you go? Are we going to be seeing terrorists under every rock? Should we take reasonable precautions? Certainly!! Should we take extreme precautions, alter our way of life, become fearful and isolated? No, that's how terrorists win. They don't conquer territory. They don't occupy cities, they conquer minds and spread fear. That is their goal. Will you let them win?

In other news, today was ham salad day, yes a pretty mundane subject, though the mundane is becoming more important these days. Anyway, when I was a kid, I used to keep tropical fish. I remember reading that you had to be careful about feeding them too much because they can and will eat until they literally eat themselves to death. I'd like to think if given the opportunity with the glorious ham salad, that I would know when to stop, but I am not entirely sure about that.

September 29, 2001
Nostalgia.......
Today I decided to do some cleaning. I dug out the first computer I had ever owned. It was a Commodore 64. It has been sitting on a shelf for years. I was entertaining the idea of selling it, though I don't know who would want it. I connected it up, after tryinig to remember how it went together, and turned it on, and voila!! It worked. Amazing. I had forgotten the commands for running programs and such, but it did bring back memories. It seems rather odd to me that this was considered high tech 15 years ago, but alas, 64K of memory running at .9MHz was indeed state of the art back then.

I also found my Pepe Le Pew hat. It was given to me as a gift quite some time ago and it has been missing for nearly 3 years. Turns out it was underneath a broken old TV that I had sitting on a shelf. Don't as me why it was there. The important thing is that its back. I have never seen another hat like it and I did miss it. But its BACK!! Hooray!!

September 23, 2001
Did you see the WTC telethon? I think a lot of people did, since it was on every TV network on television. It was pretty interesting. I think it might have been kind of scary to call to make a donation and have Jack Nicholson answer the phone. You might not want to piss off Jack by with a small donation. "What's your freaking problem, you can afford more that that". Not to mention you would have to give him your credit card number. Kinda gives me the willies. It was also interesting to see how many celebrities don't know the words to America the Beautiful. The best part of the show was seeing Muhammed Ali. He is the best part of any show he is on. He is indeed the Greatest.

Hopefully, we are all trying to get to as close to normal as possible. There had been rumors all week that Boston was going to be targeted for attack yesterday the 22nd. Nothing happened and in fact there was nothing to worry about. It reminds me of what happened in 1941 after the Pearl Harbor attack. We were seeing and hearing German or Japanese planes, or parachutists, or submarines everywhere. Of course they were all hoaxes. Something to keep in mind. Vigilance........ yes. Hysteria...... No.

September 20, 2001
Boston's Guilt
I have seen a few discussions on local TV regarding the feeling of guilt that Boston seems to feel for its part in the WTC attack. Logan Airport was the starting point of both planes that hit the World Trade Center. In addition, there have been many questions in the past about security at Logan. Several local TV shows have done segments in the past where they have breached security. Certainly Logan is not the only airport with these problems, but the focus lately seems to be on Logan. Though the focus seems more local than National. Boston's guilt seems to come more from Boston than from any blame or finger pointing going on Nationally. Having travelled out of Logan, I can say I never liked it. I have been to many East Coast airports and Logan was in my opinion the worst. A cramped, disorganized mess of an airport. And though many ideas and plans have been put forward to make Logan better, Politicians don't seem to want to do this. Maybe, and sadly, this will change.

In other news, Today is my birthday, so Happy Birthday to me. Yes I am old, really, really old, OK, not really really, maybe just really, or maybe just kinda really. I guess its all in your perspective. I don't feel old, so maybe I am not so really old. Or maybe my advancing years has muddled my mind. Eh? Who cares, Its my birthday, I get cake!!

September 18, 2001
Yesterday our President claimed he wanted Oasaama Bin Laden caught Dead or Alive. My first thought was that Bon Jovi song, but then I began to wonder how wise it was to say such a thing. Not that I disagree with the sentiments, its unlikely that we will be able to arrest Bin Laden, hand cuff him, read him his rights and take him away. However there seems to be something unsavory about the leader of the free world, a bastion of democracy and justice basically calling for the murder of another human being. It seems that it should be beneath him, something that he should have his underlings say while he rises above the fray. It just makes me a little bit uncomfortable to hear our President talking like some old west sheriff.

In other news. A friend of mine asked me to take a spirituality test. I didn't score very well, look at my personality page for my results. Basically I scored as a hardcore skeptic. I kinda knew that was going to happen as I started answering the questions. I guess I don't have much use for organized religion. If you realize how many people have died because of religion including over 5000 last week. Protestants and Catholics are killing each other in Ireland, Hindus and Moslems are killing each other in Pakistand and India and Moslems and Christians have been killing one another throughout what was Yugoslavia. Through history millions of people have died in the name of religion. Yes, I am a hardcore skeptic and proud of it.

September 12, 2001
I like to read history and starting when I was very young I was fascinated with Pearl Harbor. My dad took me to the movie Tora Tora Tora when I was very young. I have read many many things about Pearl Harbor. In 1941 a foreign nation attacked us without warning in a hope to demoralize us. This is our Pearl Harbor. It didn't work then, it shouldn't work now. Like then, our lives are forever changed. It remains to be seen whether we are up to the challenge our parents, (My dad fought in World War 2) and grandparents faced. This will be a struggle, it will not be accomplished quickly. It may never fully be accomplished, requiring vigilance from us all. Terror is easy, freedom is hard. That is our choice.

September 6, 2001
The word of the day is Nimrod
Why? At work today we got in a more than usual number of calls from customers with questions that had very obvious answers. Case in point, a call comes in, "My program won't print"!!! "Did you select something to print?" "Um, er, nevermind."
But that wasn't the really kicker. Today a person called who had seen us at a trade show 2 YEARS AGO. He had a trial version of our software and wanted to buy our software at the show special. The show special from 2 YEARS AGO, roughly $2300. Since that time we have improved the greatly, we now sell it for $3500. But he said he wife was sick, two years ago, and he had to take care of her, two years ago and now though she is better, he still has to take care of her. He wants to start his business, a business he hasn't started in two years and he says he got many people to buy our software, even though he was taking care of his wife and unable to start his business. What really bothered me about this is that he then said that he didn't want to have to go to one of our competitors to buy their software. In other words, unless you give me software worth $3500 for $2300, I will have to go elsewhere to buy more software, and besides my wife was sick and I had to take care of her, and I haven't started up my business yet. For some reason he believed this would work and get him what he wanted, it didn't. My boss was very nice and did offer to send him a more updated version of the trial version. Me, I could only think of one word. Nimrod.

In other news, today was glorious Ham Salad day, the perfect antidote to the Nimrod.

September 3, 2001
Happy Labor Day
Or should I say lack of labor day, since most people have the day off, though it wasn't too many years ago when I was one of the unlucky few who had to work on Labor Day. On Cape Cod Labor Day is a big deal. This is the day that Cape Cod is returned to its rightful owners. The tourists all leave, sometimes in droves and the locals breath a collective sigh of relief. Finally they are gone, well except for the weekends. A tradition that I don't quite understand occurs every Labor Day. Locals hang out on the many overpasses that are on Rt 6, the main highway of escape. They make signs and wave and holler at the leaving tourists. Usually someone waves a sign "Last one off, lock the gate". How quaint. I never much got into this ritual. I worked many years in retail and was very happy to see the folks leave and didn't really care if they came back. Now that I don't make my living catering to the "ristos" as we call them, they don't bother me either way. Still you won't catch me with a sign.

August 26, 2001
Now this is weird
I have been on the Internet well over 5 years and in that time I have stumbled across a variety of characters. One of these characters was a Terri DiSisto. Terri used to send bunches of spam emails to me, and of course many others asking for videos of men between the ages of 18 and I think 25 being tickled. She offered money and computers for those who complied. Well, not being of the age 18 to whatever and not really believing that she would come through, nor wanting to get involved in this woman's fetish, I found these emails very annoying. This was back in the day when spam was in its infancy and very rare. Well these emails weren't rare and I on one occasion replied back to Terri asking her to stop. We actually exchanged emails with her claiming she was in her rights to annoy me with these emails and me saying she was not. This degraded to her calling me anti semetic names, I am not jewish though if you mispell my name, it is a common jewish surname, and then her threatening to mailbomb me. I stopped at that point, though I did complain to some webpage providers about her web page and I think to some ISP's as well. After a while I never heard from her again.
Fast forward to today. For some reason this popped into my head and though I hadn't heard from her in about 2 years I thought I would research Ms. Terri. Well, was I ever shocked. I found and article about her being arrested and facing jail time for cyber harrassing a Drexel University student. Turns out he had made some videos for her and then decided he didn't want to be involved with her. She mail bombed his account. She pretended to be him and mailbombed his dean and basically used the net to harrass him severely. Oh yeah, something else came out of this. Terri DiSisto, a 23 year old Boston area college student was in fact David D'Amato a 39 year old Vice, yes I said vice, Principal of a Long Island, NY middle school. I told you this was weird. Seems Mr Dave has a fetish to see young men tickled, weird enough it was a 20 something woman, quite a bit weirder that it turned out to be a 30 something year old guy. Oh and he did pay for the tapes he received, in fact his collection cost him tens of thousands of dollars. Eeek!!!

In other news!!
Jethro Tull rules!!! Well maybe not rules, but.... Jethro Tull kicks ass!!!! OK maybe not really kicks ass, but....... Jethro Tull ROCKS!!! OK, we can agree on that. Last Friday I saw Tull at the Cape Cod Melody Tent, a fairly small venue, but a very cool show, even though the song Aqualung, which they closed the show with, is 30 years old. Not bad for a bunch of old geezers....... them..... not me....Really!!

August 23, 2001
Hooray!!!!
Good News, Jesse Helms, probably one of the worst Senators in modern history is retiring. This is the guy who critcized GW for saying Russian President Putin was trustworthy. This is the guy who runs campaigns trying to keep minorities from voting. This is the guy who said President Clinton, "better watch out if he comes down here [to North Carolina]. He'd better have a bodyguard." causing the Secret Service to open a file on him. This is the guy who said, The New York Times and The Washington Post are both infested with homosexuals themselves." The Post, he charged, "caters to homosexual groups. Just about every person down there is homosexual or lesbian,". He also refused to apologize for a statement he made claiming that homosexuals who die of AIDS got what they deserved.
I was hoping he would run again, he is pretty much assured of losing if he did. But I guess anyway we get rid of this useless excuse of humanity is fine with me.

I haven't heard anything back from Congressman Delahunt [See my last daily drivel]. However I have done some research on this tax rebate thing, and it is quite confusing. It seems, that we are due to have our tax rates cut, I think, and the rebate is going to reflect that cut, hopefully. So we won't really have to repay the rebate that we are getting, it looks like. So I am reasonably confident, kinda, that this is going to work out, sorta. I think...... maybe, it could happen. Or not.

August 20, 2001
I'm hoping this is not true!!
One of the guys at work brought in a small clipping from the our local Sunday Paper. It was from the AP wire originating at the Toledo Blade, I'm assuming this is Toledo, Ohio's local newspaper. It said that the tax rebate that we are all desperately waiting for actually isn't a rebate at all. Its an advance. That is, the money I will get, $300, is just an advance on my tax refund for next year and were I to not be getting a refund this year, I would have to pay back my $300. I didn't know this!!! No one, not the President nor the various leaders of Congress mentioned this and I am hoping they didn't mention it because its not true. I am going to be emailing my Congressman, Bill Dellahunt [have you emailed your Congressman lately?] after writing this and to see if he knows anything about this. I sure as hell hope this isn't true.

In other news, I was watching the news and saw that over 106 million of us are overweight. To put this in perspective our population is 275 million. One of the main culprits is that, and I know this is hard to believe, we eat too much. More specifically, our culture is geared toward bigger. Super size, large portions, jumbo buckets. We eat too much. We we go out to dinner, we choose the restaurant with the largest portions. And I don't know about you, but you feel compelled to eat everything on your plate, something about children starving in China or Africa or something. Rarely do I have them wrap it up to take it home. However I am thinking it might be better to get the doggy bag. If one person does it, maybe others will follow suit, next thing you know we have a trend, a following, a movement......... Don't laugh, it could happen.

August 19, 2001
This is from the History Channel, one of my favorite things on TV
This past week in history in August 14, 1936, the last public execution in the US was carried out. By this time all the States of the Union had outlawed public executions, except one, Kentucky. A man, Rainey Bethea, in Owensboro, KY was convicted of murder and rape and sentenced to death. The death was to be done by hanging and the hanging done by the Sheriff, Sheriff Florence Thompson, a woman. Her husband had died in the middle of his term and she took over his term. A deputy secretly agreed to pull the lever for Sheriff Thompson. For the hanging, an expert was called. A farmer from Illinois, George Hanna, brought his own gallows, hood and restraints. Hanna insisted that the Sheriff pull the lever and no one else. When it came time for the execution, a large crowd had gathered. Sheriff Thompson hid out in a nearby car and was not on the gallows. Bethea said nothing and the hood was put over his head. The deputy who had agreed to pull the lever was drunk and hesistated in pulling the lever. Hanna, did not want the prisoner to suffer, by having to wait and yelled at the deputy to "Do it now". Another deputy pushed the drunken deputy's hand and Bethea fell.
The press had a lot of interest in this, looking to write a story on the woman hangman. When this didn't pan out, many papers of the day reported a riot by the people of Owensboro, tearing at the dead man and taking souvenirs. This did not happen. Instead the crowd quietly left and went on its way. Sheriff Thompson was not spared and received over 100 death threats for being involved in the execution. In 1938, Kentucky outlawed public execution.
I have explained my views on the death penalty in the past. Do we really need to kill our own citizens? Do we really want to see our Government perform these executions? I would hope, no.

August 16, 2001
Today is the 24th Anniversary of the day Elvis Presley was shot. You might say, "John, what are you talking about? Elvis Presley was never shot." Well, yeah, true but in our family he was. You see, back in 1977, we were hanging around the house. Suddenly, my sister burst from her room saying, "Elvis Presley was shot!!" My dad was quite upset, "What is this world coming to, they shot Elvis Presley". We were all horrified. Then the shock wore off and we asked "How do you know Elvis was shot?" My sister replied, "It was on the TV." "I was watching a show and on the bottom of screen it said. Bullet in Elvis, Presley dead." We thought a moment and said. "Don't you mean, Bulletin: Elvis Presley dead?" My sister, thought briefly and then looked sheepishly, "Yeah, I think you are right." By the way, my sister was 12 years old at the time, not a little kid. Never has the death of a pop icon caused so much laughter. Since Elvis's death is "celebrated" every year, this gives me a perfect opportunity to remind my sister of her proclamation all those many years ago. This year I left a message on her answering machine, I sang, briefly "Are you lonesome" and reminded her. She just loves hearing about this from me.

In other news, Jimy Williams was fired as the Red Sox manager. I suspect that this isn't going to bode well for the team, however stranger things have happened. The Red Sox have a history of firing managers at odd times and yet it all seems to work out. Hopefully this will happen this time, but I'm not holding my breath.

August 14, 2001
Johnny Cochran, you know the "If it don't fit, you must aquit" guy from the OJ trial. He is some kind of lawyer. Let me explain.
You may have heard of a man on vacation in the Bahamas who was attacked by a shark while swimming. The shark bit off his leg, fortunately the man swam to shore where he was attended by lifeguards and a doctor who happened to be in the area. He will recover, sans one leg. Johnny Cochran is suing the resort on behalf of the man because they: a) Didn't warn the man that there was a possibility of shark attacks. You see the water was murky and according to Mr Cochran, most shark attacks occur in murky water. And b) the lifeguards, seeing the man being attacked by a shark, did not go into the water to rescue him. It would seem that it is the responsibility for a resort to warn customers that they could be attacked by a shark, even though shark attacks are more rare than being hit by lightning. Further it seems that lifeguards are supposed to risk life and limb and jump into the water when a shark attacks even though most sane people would run or swim or both as fast as they can in the opposite direction. The resort is being sued in a New York court, the owners live in New York, because Mr Cochran feels more "comfortable" in a NY court than in the Bahamas. The reason he feels more comfortable is because the Bahamas are a British territory and subscribe to British law. British tort law says that a Plaintiff has to pay a Defendant's court costs if the Plaintiff loses to the suit. This is to cut down on frivolous law suits, something that makes Johnny Cochran uncomfortable.

In other news. Today an angelic choir once again sang at lunch time, yes that's right, a Ham Salad was consumed for lunch today.

August 10, 2001
Some news tidbits I have heard lately regarding people needing money

I heard a story about a town in Kentucky, don't know the name, that needed a new pumper fire engine. The girls at the local strip stop the show every Saturday and pass the hat among patrons to help raise the money for the fire truck. The Chief in this town has taken a lot of criticism for accepting the money, but he added, that no one could come up with a better idea. So the ladies keep passing the hat and the town has a brand new fire truck.

The top air traffic controller for the San Francisco airport was arrested today for being a bank robber. Turns out that in his spare time he has hit upwards of nine different banks in the area even though his salary is $100,000. Upon being picked up, he confessed claiming he needed the money for child support and to combat the high cost of living in the Bay Area. Sheesh, I thought it was expensive to live here.

In other news, it is raining. This is the first break in the weather in about a week, though it is still pretty humid. But soon the favorable winds of cool air will blow our way and hopefully the humidity will go the way of the Edsel and the typewriter. I can dream can't I?

August 6, 2001
We are having a heat wave, again. Actually the heat hasn't been that bad, though they are saying that it will be tomorrow, what has been really bad is the humidy. So I guess we are having a humidity wave. Either way, the air less box I work in was none too pleasant. I am considering working from under my desk, thinking it should be cooler and if not, I can maybe catch a quick nap, like George on Seinfeld. At any rate, I am not a happy camper, more like a sticky camper, and believe me folks..... A sticky camper is not a pleasant sight.
In other news, I missed the Cape Cod Air show this past weekend. I usually try to go, but couldn't get there this time. What did I miss? Glad you asked. I missed a crash. Now I am sure you are saying to yourself, "My God, John you missed a horribly fiery plane crash, Oh the Humanity!!!" (I can tell you would say that). Well, no, you would be wrong, what I missed was a car crash. Seems one of the acts at the show was a rocket powered car that speeds at 300 MPH. The car, did its thing, getting up to 300 MPH, but when it came time to stop, well things didn't quite work out. According to the news video, only one of the drag parachutes deployed causing the car, a Lincoln Navigator SUV, to tumble out of control. The driver was not seriously injured, broken arm and rib, though I just think there is something a little bit amusing about a car crash at an air show.

August 3, 2001
I am depressed...... Well not really, in fact you have to be careful about saying that. A co worker of mine, we will call him Ken, because that's his name, had a very intense migraine head, sort of a migraine times 3. So bad that he went to the hospital. Well, they prescribed him pain medication which didn't work and he once again went back to the hospital, this time they gave him the right drugs and cured the headache. Well, he then went to his PCP, we who have HMO's know these people. They are Personal Care Physicians, people who the HMO thinks will say "no" enough to keep the HMO from having to actually spend money on you. His PCP looked him over and gave him a prescription "to help him sleep". Well, he didn't have trouble sleeping, so he didn't take them. Later, he looked at the prescription. It was a seratonin reuptake inhibitor, or as we commonly know it, Prozac. Ken became enraged, he was very upset that his doctor prescribed him an anti depressant so he could sleep, even though he never complained about sleeping. In fact it seems derivatives of Prozac are popping up all over the place. Check out your TV and you will see ads for Zoloft, the ad recommends that you get this prescription if you are feeling down and not enjoying things like you used to, a real problem for some I am sure, but basically pretty normal for the rest of us. (Should I take prozac because playing with blocks no longer thrills me like it did when I was 3 years old?) Now understand that I know that Prozac and its derivatives are important to some people. But it seems that doctors want to give out these things to everyone, for everything. A woman I dated once, was given Serafin, because she was feeling down, the fact that she had a thyroid condition was ignored. Serafin is Prozac folks, they are actually doling these things out for women with PMS. These things change your brain chemistry folks, doctors should NOT be handing these things out like candy. Drug companies should not be advertising these things on TV. Sometimes when you are depressed, its just the normal course of life. Live with it and move on. Stop trying to find a way to be happy all the time, it won't happen, nor should it.
OK, that's enough for now. Be cool!!

July 30, 2001
How much am I worth? Well I know that most of you would say, like it says in the credit card commercial, that I am priceless. Right.......????? Well it seems someone has quantified my worth, along with everyone elses. Go to www.humanforsale.com and you can find out how much you are worth. Myself, I'm worth $1,845,350.00. A pretty fair pile of change. Do I hear any takers?

In other news, I usually don't mention sports too often here, but yesterday the Red Sox welcomed back Nomar Garciparra (ok, I can't spell his last name correctly). He has been recovering from surgery and has missed the whole year. Well in his first game back, he hit a home run, his first hit of the season and knocked in two more runs leading the Red Sox to a win. Kinda has that story book feel to it, don't it?

July 25, 2001
"We're having a heatwave, a tropical heatwave......" and it sucks. Life in the airless box I work in was not fun. Amazingly, the computers did not futz or fry. This is the 3rd day in a row of over 90 degree weather, which is what constitutes an official heatwave. It has left me tired, hot and cranky. In fact I didn't walk the beach tonight, which I have been doing religously for nearly two months. The only good news is, that tomorrow its all over. Cool weather will make its presence known and spread its big smiley face all over our sweaty bodies. Hmm, sounds kind of exciting.

In other news, I took another test. You can see the results on my Personality Page, suffice to say, I am "relatively" normal. But we already knew that, right? Right? I said, RIGHT??? Oh forget it.

July 24, 2001
There's a fair in the air, or so the jingle says. This past weekend I went to the Barnstable County Fair with my Sister, Brother inlaw and my two Nephews. I hadn't been to the fair in quite some time, so it was fun to do the fair stuff. I am not much for the games, but my nephew Christopher played a few of them winning mostly stuffed animals. My sister got caught up in a dart game, she actually plays darts and is fairly good at popping balloons. However the guy was very good at leading her on, "Here, throw these darts now and you can pay me later". After about 20 dollars worth of darts she had a tigger stuffed animal. Hmmm. I did go on the rides, did the bumper cars, people with RP are especially good at that. Also took on my fear of heights and did the ferris wheel. I didn't have any problems with that until the ride stopped with me and Christopher on the top. He sitting on one side of the bucket, me on the other. He weighing a fraction of what I weigh, made the bucket tip uncomfortably to my side. I also did a ride which shoved me around, up and down and side to side. Kinda nauseating, but fun. My little nephew Timmy enjoyed all the animals and as a souvenir of the day, I got a sunburn on my neck. All in all, a good day.

In other news, the Great White Shark spotted off Chatham, has been down graded to a Mako Shark. Not as deadly as a Great White but it did attract the interest of the Today show this morning.

July 23, 2001
Today's drivel was going to be about my weekend at the Barnstable County Fair, I will save that until tomorrow, instead I want to talk about Viruses.
I got virused tonight. The name of the virus was the W32/sircam virus. I had just recently, in fact a day ago updated my McAfee definitions. And in fact McAfee spotted the virus but it did a really poor job of cleaning out the virus. In fact I ended up doing it myself. The virus writes to the registry and also replicates itself every time you run a program. For a time there I was unable to run any programs, but since I am a really, really good computer geek, I was able to circumvent the malicious attempts to bring down my system. I am kind of proud of myself. Take that virus makers!! Oh and if I did use that god awful program, Outlook or its smaller brother Outlook Express, you, or at least those of you in my address book, would receiving bizarro emails from me. Since I am again smart enough to avoid that crappy program, you are spared.
Like the caption on my personal page says. "Good looking and humble too."

In other news, we had a maybe Great White Shark off the shores of Cape Cod, specifically, Chatham. Though it seems that maybe it was a Mako Shark. Needless to say this has put the fear of "Jaws" in the minds of all our touristoes. Kinda funny, I think.

July 18, 2001
Today started out as an ordinary day. A bit of an overcast in the sky. Then around lunch time a ray of sun burst through the clouds. Almost impercitible a choir of angelic voices began to sing. The whole in the clouds began to grow and a deep, very deep voice called out. "John". I stammered an answer, "yes". "Behold, ambrosia, a meal fit for a god." And then from the light swelled hole in the sky it came. A sandwich, ney THE SANDWICH. A ham salad, sub with pickle and american cheese. 12" of nirvana (get your mind out of the gutter). It slowly floated down from the sky and I fell to my knees, grabbing at it, like it were a life jacket and I were going down for the third time. I savoured if bite as I slowly and gently consumed the sub. After I finished, the whole in the sky closed, the angels stopped their song and they day went on like any other day, but I had a smile on my face and that was all that mattered.

July 15, 2001
I am vexed!!
Two things happened this week to piss me off.
First, the IOC (International Olympic Committee) awarded the 2008 Olympics to Beijing, China. Probably the most repressed politically of the major world powers. A country that has killed thousands of its own citizens in an attempt to quell political dissent. For some reason the IOC thinks if they give them the Olympics they will change their ways. Of course the leader of China, who backed the bid to get the Olympics also knows that. How much you wanna bet they are going to find a way to prevent this from happening. It seems the IOC is suffering from cranial to anus insertion.
The other issue of vexation comes from the House of Representatives who have found a way to kill at least temporarily, the McCain/Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Bill. Do I smell a Tom Delay here? It seems that the Republican party has an unlimited number of repressed, regressed, obstructionist nincompoops. We lose Newt Gingrich and he is replaced by Tom Delay. Figures he is from Texas.

July 11, 2001
I got an email from a friend of mine with this great idea. If you are like me, you receive bunches of junk mail for credit cards, or other kinds of discount cards or clubs or subscription requests. Well, if you would like to get even a bit with these people you can do something very simple. Almost all of these things have post paid envelopes in them. Simple stick something in there, like some other junk mail you received and mail it back to the offending company. Make sure your address or name isn't on the mail, and if you don't have anything to send, simple send them a blank envelope. If enough people do this, this nonsense mail will cost the offending company enough money they will stop sending out these solicitations. Even if this doesn't happen you will have the knowledge that you have annoyed someone who doesn't think very much of you in the first place.

July 8, 2001
How gay am I? Well according to thespark.com's fabulous gay test, I am 21% gay. This seems to make me less gay than the average straight male. If you click over to my personality page, look for the link on the top of this page, for all the details.
Also according the brunching.com http://www.brunching.com/toys/toy-cyborger.html my cyborg name is
J.O.H.N.: Judge Optimized for Hazardous Nullification. Just in case you were dying to know.

July 4, 2001
Happy 4th of July. It was rainy and cloudy here, so the festivities were dampened. I had read in the paper today that one out of five, in other words 20% or teenagers don't know what country we gained our independence from. The answer of course is Great Britain. The article went to point out that much of the population in general has difficulty with a lot of basic history facts of this country. LIke who Betsy Ross was, and who wrote the Declaration of Independence or where it was signed or... when it was signed, (hint: its a holiday). This stuff always bothers me, in part because I am a bit of a history buff so I know the answers to these an many more obscure facts. But also, we don't realize or understand what an amazing concept our country was founded upon. Right now Democracy is flourishing all around the world, but back in 1776 the idea of a government by the people and for the people was preposterous. This just didn't happen in the 18th century and yet it was an idea that has caught on and has been flourishing for the past 225 years. When the students revolted in Tiananmen Square in China a decade ago. They could recite the Declaration of Independence better than most of us can. Maybe we should appreciate and learn more about this novel little experiment called the United States of America.

July 1, 2001
Terns! Terns! Terns! There is a season....... Pretty much every day I walk to the West Dennis Beach. Its good exercise. The beach consists of a long road about 2-3 miles long. On one side is the beach on the other side, marsh and dunes. In those dunes there are numerous Tern nests. Terns are a shore bird that is somewhat endangered because their nesting areas are being encroached upon by development. So as I walk, I hear the Terns squawking and squealing and this reminds me of when I was in high school. One year they inexplicably had finals a week before school ened. They told us we could still have our grades changed if we didn't show, but we didn't believe them and ditched most of the last week. One of the activities we decided upon was to go down to the beach and play frisbee. On one occasion, the frisbee floated over the hurricane fence and into the dunes. Being young and unknowing, I hopped over the fence to retrieve the frisbee. All of a sudden I start hearing the squawks of some kind of bird. Then the wings of the bird as it began to dive at me over and over. I had walked into a tern nesting area. I quickly, very quickly grabbed my frisbee and high tailed it out. Hell hath no fury greater than a momma tern scorned.

Ah, the memories of childhood.

June 26, 2001
I have fans. Lots and lots of fans. Where I work, well, its very warm. So at my feet there is a fan. When I go home and get in the car, there is a fan blowing air on me. When I eat dinner, there is a fan up on the refrigerator blowing down on me. As I type this, there is a fan in the window blowing on me. At night, when I am sleeping, I have a fan blowing on me. If only I could get ATM machines to follow me around like that.

In other news, today was glorious Ham Salad day. Yummy!!!