It looks like tonight is starting to shape up as a pretty lame New Year's. I haven't heard back from M&C yet again, but as far as I know, they're going to some private part at some dive of a bar. As my parents are hosting my aunt and uncle this year (they usually take turns, but I'm not sure at what point they got off), that means I can't throw a party here. My only other option appears to be to go down to Oshkosh with Corey. I'm told that Erik is driving up from Chicago and ought to be to Jeff's by about 10. While I don't doubt that a party at Jeff's could be okay, I imagine it being fairly lame. For one, the house is already trashed. For two, those guys rarely do anything other than watch tv or play video games. For three, I think most of them are more interested in doing drugs than drinking. For four, Corey, Jeff, Erik, Mike, and Chris can be cool, but I'm the jury is still out on Pete and I don't particularly like Jay (both of whom are more than likely going to be there). I don't know. As Corey said, if nothing else, it's better than staying home and watching tv. You never know, maybe these guys can actually get out and party once in a lifetime.

While I'm on a roll here, I might as well keep going....

I'm also quite angry that the New Year's celebrations are being allowed to take place tonight in downtown Appleton with open support from the Appleton Police Department in full knowledge that the events are taking place in violation of city ordinance.

The organizers of the events failed to apply for the proper permits before the deadlines had passed. The police department - going beyond their power - decided to allow the events to take place as long as the organizers paid the fine for failing to have the permits. That's bullshit! Their only job is to enforce the laws, not to interpret or create laws.

What the police department should be doing tonight is closing off City Park and all other known venues for the events to keep people from entering an illegal event. This would be exactly in line with how they dealt with a party - a much smaller event at that - that was to have taken place in Telulah Park back in September. In that case, the city returned the deposit made by the planners to reserve the park and then shut down the entire park for the day to ensure that the party did not go on illegally.

Unfortunately, the police department here in Appleton, just like all other police departments, picks and chooses which laws they want to enforce, when they want to enforce them, on whom they want to enforce them, and which laws they want to break themselves. It's quite a common occurence to drive around Appleton and see police officers breaking laws themselves - everything from speeding to running red lights. It's also quite common to see the members of the Appleton Police Department watch and allow middle-aged and elderly citizens break laws, but in the event that a teenager so much as looks at a police officer cockeyed the officer is busy ticketing the teen for any possible charge they can find.

One of my personal favorite incidents involving Chief Richard Myers dates back a few years when the Post-Crescent broke news that really wasn't news to anyone - that the Appleton Police Department has a quota system. In the article, Dicky M. swore up and down that Appleton didn't have a quota system. The real kicker came a day or two later when Dick officially announced in the paper that the police department was going to suspend their quota system. Suspend? You were so adamant just 2 days earlier that you had no quota system. Alas, because Dick's a Republican, just like about 99% of the other people in this town, nobody called him on it and we all went along merrily. That's basically what is happening with the event tonight also.

What this town needs is a shake-up. We need some third-party politics to enter into the arena and help to disassemble the stronghold that the Republican party has built locally. Don't get me wrong - I think we need a little Republican influence as well - but when the entire area is dominated by Republican agendas it soon creates conflicts of interest and hypocrisy as there are no checks and balances of power. Northeast Wisconsin is essentially dominated by one party, and that's hardly the democratic way.

While I don't support blood for oil in Iraq, I disagree that the draft should be used as a leveraging tool against military action simply because minorities make up a disproporionate number of enlisted men and women. If they signed up, they knew what they were getting into. The military is just that - the military. The military wasn't established just so minorities could get free money for college. If that's the only reason that many of them signed up for the military, then they owe the rest of the people of this country for what they're getting from our tax money. While it may be a more difficult road to follow, there are other ways of getting money from the government or getting ahead in life than signing up for the military in peace time to get free benefits. When people make a commitment to the military in peace time, they do so in full knowledge that they could be called into action at any time to defend our country. I don't want war with Iraq either, but threatening to reopen the draft just because minorities comprise large percentages of the military is a ridiculous suggestion.

Harry at Northwest called me back yesterday and had me come in to pick up more paperwork that needed to be filled out. In addition to all the paperwork, I needed to take a drug test, get fingerprinted, and have my picture taken. I took care of the drug test this morning and got my picture taken when I brought the paperwork back in today, but I can't get fingerprinted until next week. Apparently Appleton does fingerprinting on Tuesday mornings and by appointment only. Grand Chute, on the other hand, decided to let all their employees have holidays today and tomorrow. Because I have the class on Thursday and Friday, I can't get my fingerprinting done until next week. Poop.

I take full credit for the Packers losing their last regular season game against the Jets. If I hadn't gone out of my way to rant about how the Packers can't get any respect they might have won the game. If you look back at this post from November 17th you will see that the last time I made similar remarks the Packers followed it up by losing to both Minnesota and Tampa. I don't know what I was thinking. My writing obviously influenced them to play perhaps the worst game I've seen them play as a team in the Holmgren-Rhodes-Sherman era. Losses earlier this season against Minnesota and Tampa were largely the fault of Favre and his interceptions, but the loss to New York was a full team job. The defense missed tackles left and right. The offense failed to execute much of anything. Longwell failed to comprehend that onside kicks have to travel 10 yards before any of his teammates can touch the ball. The coaching staff seems to have brought the team into the game completely unprepared. The player who comes closest to having little blame for the loss is punter Josh Bidwell.

Now that the Packers lost and blew their opportunity for home field advantage, I no longer fancy their chances of reaching the Super Bowl. The reasons are simple: 1) The Packers barely beat Atlanta the first week of the season with most everyone healthy. Without Donald Driver and perhaps Darren Sharper, I don't think they stand a chance. 2) Should the Packers win on Saturday, they'll either have to play in Tampa or Philadelphia, and I don't fancy their chances against either team. Should the same Philly offense show up that showed up against the Giants on Saturday, then the Packers might have a chance. Should the Tampa defense show up at all, then I don't give the Packers any chance, even if Brad Johnson doesn't play. It may be time to start thinking about next season.

In other football news, congratulations to the Golden Gophers on dominating Arkansas in their 29-14 win in yesterday's Music City Bowl. I was a little worried when I saw the ease with which Arkansas marched through the Minnesota defense on the opening possession, but then the defense stepped up and stuck it to the Razorbacks. The offense had one of their best performances of the season, capped off by touchdowns by Utecht and Tapeh and 5 Nystrom field goals. Additional congratulations go out to Dan Nystrom for becoming the new all-time field goal leader in Big Ten history. Of course, out of the 70+ field goals he kicked in his collegiate career, the biggest had to be the game winner a few years back against then-#2 Penn State. Rah rah ski-u-mah!

I'm sorry, but I'm just getting really fed up with supposed football "experts" around the country. Will anybody outside Northeast Wisconsin please step up and give the 12-3 Green Bay Packers just a little credit? I remember watching some show on ESPN before the season started where all the ESPN football analysts were making their preseason Super Bowl and MVP predictions. Every analyst but 1 - I think it was Chris Mortenson - predicted the Rams to return to the Super Bowl with either Warner or Faulk to be the MVP. The other analyst picked Green Bay. As we begin today the final week of the regular season, Green Bay is tied with Philadelphia for the best record in football. Oakland isn't 12-3. Miami isn't 12-3 either. Neither are Tampa Bay, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Denver, either New York team, Tennessee, Atlanta, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, New England, or any other team that has received more credit for their season than have the Green Bay Packers. Lately it has been fashionable in the national media to mention how Tennessee has been underrated all season - so fashionable, in fact, that they've now become overrated. While it's true that Green Bay has, indeed, lost to New Orleans, Minnesota, and Tampa this year, I'd like to point out that Tennessee has lost to Dallas, Cleveland, Washington, and Baltimore - in addition to an old-fashioned ass-whooping by Oakland. Green Bay also owns wins this season against Miami, New England, Buffalo, San Francisco, and Atlanta. Teams don't just waltz to a 12-3 record. Somewhere along the way that team isn't going to need some pretty good players and is going to need to tough out some gritty wins. Other than Philadelphia, who have hardly suffered in the loss of Donovan McNabb thanks to everyone on the team stepping up their play, no team has grinded out wins the way Green Bay has this season. On top of it all, don't even get me started on the way Green Bay has compiled a 12-3 season to this point despite having more games missed by starters due to injury than almost every other team this year. Don't worry though - come January 27th everyone will claim that they thought Green Bay would win it all from the beginning.

For anyone who might actually care, I just thought I'd let you know that I got the job - sort of. Harry from Northwest called me last night to offer me a part-time job. I took it. I figured if I get my foot in the door, maybe a full-timer will quit soon and I can take their spot. Now I just have to wait another week or so until the background checks have been run so I can get my airport security clearance.

I was just out driving around when I saw the marquee at Taco Bell says simply "Peace". It had me thinking about how ironic it is that Christians all across the land are hanging up signs and knick-knacks that say "Peace on Earth," yet are clammering for a war with Iraq. Of course, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that in this time of such a commercialized Christmas people should be supporting a war whose sole purpose is to protect our corporate interests.

I have to share this with the rest of the world because we all know this is too good to be true... or is it?

I called Tony's house yesterday in the early afternoon and talked to Mom. She said that Tony was flying in last night and she'd have call me as soon as he got home. Fair enough. Then I got another phone call shortly after 4. It was Mom again. She said that Tony had "missed his flight"! and was going to be flying in on Sunday instead. What the hell?! Missed his flight?! Now I can't wait for him to arrive, because I just have to hear this story.

Let's see here... in other news, nothing. Last night I went out with Matt and Carrie. We had a drink at Jim's, where we were hoping to run into the Miller rep who had told Matt she'd be there all night, but she wasn't. Then we went down to Jekyll's for a couple drinks. Squishy came in at 10 as usual to work the door, so we talked to him for a while. When I went to tell him that Matt and Carrie are hosting trivia this year, he was actually rather disappointed, as he was going to say that he wanted to host trivia this year. Well, maybe he'll still be interested next year. Then we went back to Jekyll's to see if the Miller rep was there yet, but Matt still didn't see her. Matt bought a round of drinks and stuck around for that. The place was turning into another class reunion, but it wasn't all bad, as learned a bit of information we didn't know before: Jesus (aka Barry aka Erik) and Shelly were married 2-1/2 years ago and are now living in Arizona. Jesus wasn't there, but Shelly was in town to visit her family. After that we came back to Matt and Carrie's to play Top Shop. We had just barely started a game when Corey showed up, so we restarted and went at it again. This was just after midnight. We played and played and played some more - everyone took about 90 turns - until finally Corey won a little before 3. Matt had an opportunity to win earlier, but a combination of alcohol and a desire to screw me over instead of winning caused him to miss his chance to win. Corey left, Matt went up to bed, and Carrie and I sat up talking for a while. I eventually just crashed overnight on the couch and I'm still here now.

When we first went out last night we made a stop at the gas station. I had thought about buying a Powerball ticket, but the guy behind me insisted that he had the winning numbers, so I figured it would be a waste of my dollar to buy a ticket. He lied to me! Nobody won. Bastard. So, now I might have to actually buy a ticket myself to have a chance at winning $280,000,000+ on Christmas day. Sure the odds are against you and then some, but at the same time, you can't win if you don't play.

I rushed out this afternoon and watched the matinee screening of Gangs of New York. I just had to. I'm glad I did, for it's the best film I've seen so far this year. Of course, that's not saying much, for I really haven't seen much this year. At any rate, I have to say that it has to be an early frontrunner for Best Picture. Not only is it a good movie, but I has that epic quality which the Academy loves.

To complete my experience, I see that TCM is showing Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies tonight followed by The Last Waltz. Having already watched 3 hours of movie this afternoon, I don't know that I want to sit through 6 more hours tonight, but I can guarantee you that the vcr will be rolling.

It's about time we got down to business and got this damn war going! It seems authorities in California have begun rounding up Muslims. The best part is, the infidels are coming to us! That's right - these law-abiding non-Christians were coming to register with the government, as a new federal law requires, and the government was able to just lock them right up. Thanks to the "Patriot" Act, the government doesn't have appease those bleeding-heart liberals and reveal who or just how many people have been locked up. Hopefully we can get the concentration camps set up and start eliminating these fellow humans soon. Der Führer's plans are all starting to come together. And now that we have officially declared Iraq in "material breach" in their arms declaration, there's nothing to stop King Dubya from bombing Iraq into oblivion. Oh how I love this country! How could people in other countries not just love us?

My dad left early this morning to drive out to La Crosse to pick up The Brat. He had to be out of his dorm by 10, so my dad had to be there early enough to load up whatever crap he's bringing home with him and get the hell out of there. I'm not sure exactly when they'll be home, but I suppose it doesn't matter much. I mean, what's a few minutes more or less when I'm going to have to put up with his shit for a whole month. Hopefully he goes out a lot and I get a job. A combination of the two would decrease time spent in the house together exponentially, which would also ease tensions and lessen the chance of me needing to beat the shit out of him. Ah, brotherly love.

Hmmm... my current tracker misses far too much. I just decided to check out my host's tracker of my page, and although it's rather confusing to read, I can make out many things which I wish I'd otherwise known about. Okay, that didn't make a whole lot of sense. Let me see... when it comes to search words, I see that I've actually had 210 hits by people in search of "skomakarlåda" (woah, do I love skomakarlåda!), while I've only gotten 203 hits by people in search of "assahola." Of course, "Mientkiewicz" trumps them both with 242 hits. I've also never had a tatoo, yet I have 951 hits just from people in search of "tatoos." Not surprisingly, my top referers are mentaljewelry.net (Molly), followed by Too Much Trivia, and then Google. What surprises me perhaps most of all is the stat that I average 531 successful page requests per day. Are that many people really stopping by here? That's crazy talk!

I had my job interview this morning with Northwest. I hope it went well, but I'm always so terrible at interviews that I'm not going to get my hopes up at all. It's like spending all day dreaming about winning the lottery only because you bought a ticket, even though your chances of winning are somewhere between slim and none.

I decided today that I want to skip straight over being Papa and go straight to Pappy. That's right - I want grandkids. I think I need to adopt someone about my age to be my childso that they'll hopefully get married and have children soon. Then I can take the grandkids out with me and everyone will ask, "Are those the grandchildren?" and I can proudly say, "Yeah, they're my oldest's kids." I'd be the best Pappy ever.

I've also done a lot of thinking and come to the realization that I still haven't given up my dream of being a captain of industry. I just love that moniker.

It looks like I won't be going to grad school now until at least fall 2004. I finally decided to start looking into deadlines and requirements last night and it seems I've already missed deadlines for fall 2003. Since I still need to take the GRE and dig up some more recommendations, I guess I won't be applying until next fall now. Oops.

I went over to Matt and Carrie's last night, where and when they gave me my Christmas present(s). This year they gave me a Ferret Frenzy 2003 calendar (featuring pictures of ferrets doing all kinds of crazy human things) and a lighter - an Ozzy "I am the Prince of F@*#n Darkness" Osbourne lighter. We broke in the lighter plenty last night, but we'll have to wait a few weeks yet to delight in the calendar.

I just got home from another night out on the town. I went to meet Corey at the airport only to find that he had gotten out at 3. I drove over to house and found him just leaving to go to a camera store at the mall. I rode with him over there so he could get the part he needed. Then we drove down to Jeff's in Oshkosh and hung out for awhile. Jeff was still up from yesterday as part of some ridiculous personal experiment he was trying, while Chris and Mike were still up from having played "SOCOM" for over 20+ hours straight. We stuck around for about the first hour of "Saturday Night Live," gave Pete a ride home, and then came back to Appleton. We scoped out the bar scene downtown and then decided to give the Cinderella a chance. How cool can one bar be?! We spent the night downing $1 mugs of beer (I drank Old Style while Corey sipped PBR) and eating peanuts. They have signs telling the patrons to please throw their peanuts on the floor. The regulars sat in their stools or worked the slot machines. I was actually disappointed not to see mounted fish and deer heads among the wall decor. The look everyone gave us when we first walked in was tantamount to the first time we walked in to the Polish Palace. It was like, "Who the hell are these jokers?" Of course, eventually we just blended in with the wood panelling-covered walls like the rest of the barflies. Man, it was awesome.

Seeing how often I get visitors to this website searching for various information about and locales in Appleton, it stirred up a bit of curiosity in me to find other personal websites and/or blogs written by people here in town. You know what? There's next to nobody. Don't get me wrong - there are a small handful of people who can be found making the occasional mention of Appleton. There are also many others who either grew up here and moved elsewhere or who lived here temporarily as students at Lawrence. Then there are closed-minded conservative pricks like Jeff Lindsay, who has taken the time to make a fairly comprehensive overview of Appleton (from his Republican perspective, of course), but he still doesn't deserve even a small promo link from me. What there seems to be a serious lack of though are people writing commentary on the events and politics of this town. C'mon Appletonians, you can't fool me! I know there are plenty of parlor politicos out there who are just too intimidated to make jackasses of themselves like I do on a daily basis here by telling it like it is. Let's go Appleton - represent!

I know I mentioned on Wednesday that I had finally mailed in my money and application for the sub class. Well, I finally got a phone call for an interview yesterday for another job. It was the supervisor at Northwest, who set up an interview with me for this coming Wednesday. Hopefully all goes well, because while subbing might be nice as part-time employment, I should like the security of a full-time job as well.

Two very important matters are being presented before the Appleton Common Council this Wednesday (December 18) at 7pm. One of them concerns the possible ban of dogs and other pets from public events such as Octoberfest and the Christmas and Flag Day parades. It's about damn time! Get out and let your alderperson know that they should pass this ordinance through. The other important topic concerns the planned New Year's party at City Park. The organizers of the event didn't get their request for a special event permit in until after the deadline had passed. They insist that they'll put on the event anyone and just pay the $225 fine as stipulated by city ordinance for conducting large events without obtaining a special event permit. The police department is actually supportive of this idea! Talk about hypocrisy! If you will now kindly follow me back to a post I made on September 18, 2002, you will discover that the City of Appleton shut down the entirety of Telulah Park that following Saturday because of rumors that the two men who had reserved the pavilions were going to host a rave there. The police and the city used the excuse that the men claimed only 50 attendees would come, while the police fully expected as many as 400, which would require a special event permit. Because the men hadn't acquired a special event permit, the entire park was shut down the city refunded the money to the men for booking the pavilions. Now we have an event upcoming in which the police have full knowledge that thousands of people are going to show up to an event without a special event permit and instead of shutting down the entire park they intend to continue supporting this event! Don't get me wrong - I'm happy to know that someone is trying to offer some nice family fun without alcohol involved on New Year's. My problem stands with the total hypocrisy being exhibited by the city and the police department. If this event doesn't have the proper permits, then it is the duty of the police department to once again step in and shut the event down. As even my mom said, it's not like the date of New Year's changes every year. The 45-day deadline comes on the same date every year, so they knew when they needed to have their application in, and if it wasn't in on time, too bad.

Don't get me wrong, for I'm more than happy to hear that the University of Minnesota men's basketball team has begun the season 6-1, but doesn't that record lose some of its shimmer when you're clubbing schools like Fairleigh Dickinson 104-66? I think the team I played on in 4th grade that went on to win the city championship could have beaten Fairleigh Dickinson 104-66. Of course, next up is finally an opponent who might say something about the team - Oregon. Oregon is the only real competition the Golden Gophers face before the Big Ten schedule begins. Oregon is also the second of only 2 road games Minnesota plays before the start of conference games, and they got their asses handed to them when they went out to Lincoln to take on Nebraska last Sunday. I suppose I shouldn't talk too lowly of Minnesota's upcoming opponents though. I see that Texas Tech, like Minnesota, just missed out on last week's AP Top 25, while Oral Roberts even managed one point, which is only 2 less than UCLA.

Actually impressive - and thoroughly forgotten by the media - is the women's team, who have begun the season 8-0 and are actually winning by decent margins (unlike the men, who keep pulling out OT wins and shots at the buzzer). While the women's team isn't exactly taking on Duke and UConn every game themselves, they still deserve a little more recognition. Of course, not to mention that the last coach of the team had one decent season and then ditched the school for greener pastures.

Wednesday afternoon about 3:30, just as I was getting ready to sit down and watch "Jeopardy!", I got a most unexpected phone call. On the other end was Sandra, who I hadn't talked to except via email since New Year's '99. She was calling from Germany (where she and the hubby are currently residing) to catch up on old times and let me know that she'd be back in town for Christmas. We ended up talking for over an hour.

In completely different news, I've begun working on a new project. I'm not at liberty to elaborate too much at this time, but I can tell you that it involves the computer, my stereo, and Quark XPress. I'll let everyone know more when the proper time comes.

Every once in a while I become curious as to what I've been upto on this particular day in years past. Since my journals only go back as far as 1998, that's all the farther I can go, but I'm sure there's plenty I can find. Let's see....

1998: I hung out at the Foxfire in downtown Minneapolis. I was going to hang out at Espresso Expose, but they had closed at 8 because of winter break (I stuck around campus a few extra days to catch the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion show). Some band was having a CD-release party and there were lots of Radio K-types hanging around. There was also a photographer there from Request Magazine snapping photos for a story on underage clubs. He took a number of photos of me, but none of them ended up in the magazine. Of course, picture he took of these two girls who were there did later make it into the magazine.

1999: My mom called me at 9:30 in the morning because Yahoo! was down, so she couldn't access her email account to see the list of ideas I'd sent her for Christmas. This was rather early for me, as I was recovering from a late night out with Petey. I had gone to see some play Petey was in, then we went to the Dillinger 4/The Strike show at the Weisman, and then we had come back to my dorm room, ordered a pizza, and watched Can't Hardly Wait. He left around 2, but I was up yet for a while after that. Back to that day, I lazed away the day and wrote a letter to Janine. Annemarie and I showed up at Bijou that night, but Steve (the projectionist) didn't know he was supposed to bring the film with him from St. Paul. Luckily I was prepared for just such a situation and had some video cassettes along with me. Annemarie and I watched Youth Culture, Antoine Rockamore's Chinese Proverbs, and Midnight Madness. I then went home and watched more tv.

2000: It must have been a rather uneventful day. There's nothing written in my journal and the blog just mentions me looking for a new host to replace Crosswinds. I know the day before I saw Man or Astroman? at First Avenue, and the day after I skipped class while I hurriedly wrote my film journal entries for Marty's class and dropped them off in his office before the deadline.

2001: Once again, my journal lists nothing. There's an entry from a week later which states that the previous two weeks had been boring and uneventful. According to my blog, I spent the day working on my "Amos & Andy" presentation. I was in a rush to prepare the presentation, for it had to be given the next day. That didn't end up happening, as I showed up for class a minute late and the teacher had already skipped me. I got to give the presentation a few days later, but having spent all day Tuesday on rushing to prepare the presentation was wasted. I also worked the box office at the film society that night, after which I went to the library to check out books for the presentation.

Isn't that all so exciting ladies and gentlement? Ah... a walk through my Memory Lane with recollections that having nothing to do with you. How nice.

After calling around to most of the local school districts, and not understanding why they were telling me to come back to them after I've taken the substitute teaching course, it finally occured to me that I don't need one of them to sponsor me to take the course. No, I just need one of them to sponsor my application for my license after I've taken the course. Feeling like a complete dope, I wrote out the check for $65 and dropped my application in the mail this morning. Hopefully the course isn't already full because I procrastinated so long. If nothing else, I know of at least two districts who would be willing to submit the application for the license on my behalf.

I just got back from going to see Signs with my parents at the discount theatre. I had heard good things about it and figured I might as well go see it when I don't have to pay. Oops - my mistake. If you haven't seen it, let me suggest you not waste your time. Go see a more fulfilling movie like The Hot Chick or Analyze That. If you want to see another movie where people board themselves up inside a house watch The Birds. If you want to see another movie with aliens invading the Earth watch The Thing... or Invasion of the Body Snatchers or The Day the Earth Stood Still or even, god forbid, Independence Day. If you want to see another movie where the antagonist can be defeated with water watch The Wizard of Oz. Any and all of these movies are better. On the other hand, if you're in the mood for a movie that lacks almost any and all exposition and denouement, is full of lots of forced and unbelievable dialogue, forces its actors into their worst screen performances imaginable, has the worst pacing in movie history, and places a rising, swelling, and falling high-pitched score in the most inopportune places (among hundreds of other problems, but you get the idea), then watch Signs. I found it rather amusing that at several points in the film where I think the audience was supposed to be frightened, they instead broke into rancorous laughter. It reminded me of watching The Lost World in the theatre with Phisch and laughing through the entire pathetic thing. Without having ever seen another M. Night Shyamalan film, I already know that I never need to see another one, as this guy has to be the most overrated hack I've ever come across (and this even includes taking the likes of Michael Bay into account). Blech.

The weekend before I last, Corey and I introduced Matt and Carrie to Ravens. This last Saturday night, the 4 of us ran up a $100 tab. Matt and Carrie nabbed a table there for us, I stopped out by the airport to invite Corey, I joined them, and then Corey came a little later. It was about 9:30 by the time I arrived, and we didn't leave until 2:30. Ben joined us at some point well after midnight as well. While I started out with 2 Rolling Rocks, I later switched to drinking "Fruity Fucks." That's the name that Matt gave to drink that he created a week earlier. Between those of us in the group, we drank a hell of a lot of them Saturday night. Thanks to us running up such a huge tab, the bar bought us a round of shots and my and Ben's last drinks. While I had 7 drinks that night, I only managed to pay for 3 of them. I like that ratio. I guess it paid off to stick around there.

Liverpool, who lead or sat second in the Premiership for most of the first few months of the season, lost again today at Charlton, meaning they've now only taken 1 point from their last 5 matches. Worst of all, rather than other leading clubs, Liverpool's troubles have come against clubs such as Charlton and Fulham. All of a sudden a campaign which looked like it could end in Liverpool's first league championship in over a decade is now starting to look more like it could end in disappointment.

The Appleton-Neenah-Oshkosh metro area fell one spot to second this year in a list of America's safest areas compiled by Morgan Quinto Press. While we were ranked #1 last year, this year we were overtaken by Danbury, Connecticut. What the hell happened here within the last year to make us lose our #1 ranking? "Screw Danbury" is all I have to say.

I just got home from another hot night on the town. Actually, it wasn't all that exciting. Matt and Carrie had class until late (so I'm pretty sure we're going to do something Saturday night instead) and Corey had to work until 11. I stopped out at the airport at 11 and everything looked dark and locked-up, so I drove over to Corey's and he wasn't there. I then decided to give the airport another try, and when a fellow Northwest employee walked out, she confirmed for me that Corey was still out back. I think he was washing deicing fluid off the Tugs and carts. Anyway, he didn't get done until damn near 12:30. We stopped off at his place so he could change and then we went downtown. It must have been 1:30 by the time we got to Bar by Ikea. Basically I had time for one beer originally and one more at last call. Then I drove Corey home and here I am. I couldn't have had too much to drink tonight anyway, as I've been sick all day and food has gone right through the system. I'm kind of hungry right now, but I know that if I ate anything I'd probably in the can within an hour - not my ideal situation. My dad was feeling shitty all day also, which lends us to believe that it might have been related to the reheated spaghetti Mom made last night for dinner. I hate leftovers.

While I am in full agreement that something needs to be done about the sagging economy, is shit-canning Paul O'Neill really going to solve all the problems? I hope Dubya has move tricks up his sleeve than that.

Checking my email this morning, I was delighted to receive news from Chrille that he is now a father!

That is little Lucas Bella Barabasch. According to PM's email, Lucas was born at 11:41 PM on December 1 at Krankenhaus Lichtenberg in Berlin. Congratulations to Chrille, Tini, and Lucas.

While yesterday was indeed Corey's birthday, I thought the bigger news (and that which I am still celebrating) was that yesterday was the 69th anniversary of the ratification of the 21st Amendment. Woohoo!

Although I don't agree with him, I can understand why Dubya would have wanted to go to war with Iraq in the months leading up to the midterm elections. He may have been elected President, but it was only by the slimmest of electoral vote margins. At the same time, while his fellow Republicans maintained control of the House, they have temporarily lost control of the Senate when Sen. Jeffords turned independent. Seeing how successful his father's war with Iraq turned out in terms of his approval rating, combined with the fact that his approval rating is already still so high following the way he "handled" the events of September 11, 2001, another war with Iraq would surely have guaranteed a Republican landslide last month and possibly cemented his re-election in 2004.

Well, those midterm elections have come and gone and the spineless Democratic leadership scared most of their supporters into voting for moderate Republicans or third party candidates. Apparently, or at least, as the polls always seem to say, Dubya's support from the American people is as high as ever. So why is he still pushing so hard for a war with Iraq? Is he really worried that the conservative vote won't be enough to carry him against the likes of Gore or Sen. Kerry two years from now? I should think that the success of his administration in getting UN weapons inspectors back in Iraq should be enough, but apparently it's never enough. If that wasn't going to be enough for him from the start, then when did he even bother with pretending that he was interested in diplomatic solutions? He should have gone in, carpet bombed 'em, and then seen if the American people were still with him. As it is, I should think he's only alienating both his supporters and detractors. His detractors will continue to criticize him until he proves that Saddam really is a threat, while his supporters are failing to understand why he won't just take care of business and get the whole ordeal finished. This delaying, yet continuing to make open threats is helping noone, including himself.

Let's see here... it's about 1 o'clock right now. I've been online for the last 6-1/2 hours, which would be 6:30. Prior to that I was online for 7 hours today up until about 5:30. In other words, I've been sitting at my computer for about 13-1/2 of the last 14-1/2 hours. "Why?" might be the next thought that crosses your mind. To tell you the truth, I don't know. I guess maybe boredom. Without employment I have been digging for different ways to waste away my days, and I guess this was just how I chose to go about it today. Some days I read and some days I write and some days I watch tv, but today I worked online all day. Maybe I just need to force myself to sleep.

I read a pretty good oxymoron tonight and immediately broke into a healthy burst of laughter. The phrase of note was: "very politically involved conservative Republican." Hahahahahahahahahaha!!!! That's a good one! Everyone knows that anyone who is very politically involved is a liberal. Conservative Republicans are mindless sheep who believe anything and everything Dubya, Rush, Hannity, and the other pols and pundits tell them. I guess I'm not surprised since the statement comes from a high schooler. Fool.

U.S. Culture Still Has Fans. Perhaps the most ridiculous part of the article is in the parts where they point out the disagreements between what the world thinks of the U.S. and what Americans think of themselves. Yes, of course Americans are too ignorant and stupid to realize we step on everyone else's toes. Yes, Americans only think what Dubya wants us to think. I mean, the Turks aren't the morons who elected Bush. The Jordanians didn't put the Republicans in power everywhere. This is just one more survey that confirms exactly what every liberal in this country already knew, while on the other hand has already been dismissed by the conservatives as rubbish. I really need to move to a more intelligent country.

They're all done. All 273 posts made by The Collective have been tranfered and archived. I guess the next logical step is to finish off the archive template and then everything will be ready to roll once again. Boy oh boy.

I just finished converting all of my old posts to The Collective. While Annemarie's and Tony's posts totalled about 60, my posts alone totalled nearly 140! I have to this point converted 198 posts, and I still have to do all of Molly's yet, which must surely number somewhere in the area of 100. Oi.

To my fellow members of "The Collective" I should like to inform you that I will have the group operational again soon. Fed up with Blogger's inability to function correctly, I am moving operation of the group to Movable Type. The one major hold up is in moving all the archival posts to MT. While they have a faster way to do it, I had too many problems in trying to do it with my own blog to go through that ordeal again. Instead I am moving every post by hand. I have thus far posted all of Annemarie's and Tony's posts, but still have to move all of Molly's and my own, which is quite a daunting task to say the least, since they comprise probably 2/3 to 3/4 of the total entries. Just copying and posting the approximately 60 entries made by Annemarie and Tony took more than long enough, but I'm on top of it. Being unemployed, I have lots of freetime.

In other news, I went out drinking with Corey last night at Jim's. As usual, several topics of conversation came up, but perhaps most important of these at the moment is that he informed me that the people from the new operator are in town from Memphis and he picked up the reference form to turn in about me. No idea as to when I'll hear anything if at all.

My brother got a phone call today from some company who got his name off of his resume on Monster.com. They saw that he worked at Arby's and wanted to know if he was interested in part-time employment or an internship! What the fuck?! My 19-year-old brother! Only a freshman in college! Worked at Arby's! They wanted to hire him! I have to be doing something wrong, but I can't figure out what it is. I just don't get it.

Ah, the final month of the year is finally upon us. Sure, the month is wrought with cold weather and visits with the relatives, but it could be worse. No job prospects just yet, but I'm working on it. I went out to the airport yesterday and talked with the supervisor at Northwest. She told me that they hadn't begun the hiring phase as of yet, but she was glad to know that I was still interested. I should probably call around to local school districts today to see if any of them need substitute teachers and if they'd be interested in sponsoring me in going for my substitute teaching license. I was disappointed to hear that Appleton has plenty of subs, but I can live with going somewhere else also.

I made it through the weekend safely it seems. The family was gone all day Saturday up at my grandma's to cut up the deer. Saturday night I drove down to Oshkosh to meet Matt and Carrie and see the band play again. After arriving, we discovered that they were playing at a private anniversary party - a formal anniversary party - so we, of course, stood out in our t-shirts and sneakers. Apparently the members of the family didn't care much for us sitting in the corner drinking and they complained about the smoke also. Since it was obvious that we were unwanted, we hopped in my car and drove back to Appleton. We went to Jekyll's and took seats at the bar next to Zak, who was there with some other friends of his. He didn't stay long, but Squishy showed up as usual at 10 to work the door. Later Drew Barwis came in on his own, Crystal came in with some friends, and Trixie walked in with Nick, which caused Carrie to want to leave. Feeling tired anyway, I drove them home and took off. I can't say that much of anything happened on Sunday. My mom took off of work on Monday to begin working on decorating the house for Christmas, as our family is hosting the Koeller family Christmas party this year. My mom spent the better part of the day trimming the tree, while I sat on my ass watching tv. We went out shopping at one point to purchase more lights (among other things), and then Mom took me to Rogan's for shoes. I picked out a pair of dress shoes - my first pair ever - as a Christmas present. As I had bought my running shoes there the other day, we were able to bring the receipt back and get half off on the second pair. Speaking of running, I started me new daily running regimine yesterday. Could even make it around the block. Shit, I'm out of shape. At least today, day 2, I made it around the block. This is going to take a lot of work. Since I don't have any real plans for today, I guess I'll probably spend another day harrassing the cats. I need a job - a real job - not another one of these shit temp jobs. I think that because I quit that last temp job over a week ago, and I haven't talked to the agency since, I have officially been canned by them. Oops.