This is why inspections in Iraq will never work. Got the link from VodkaPundit.

The strange and sordid tale of Aileen Wuornos. I ran into this link while surfing Norah's BlogJam. Aileen's execution for the murder of her first victim is coming any day.

Mickey Kaus thinks that Arnold Schwarzenegger is running for governor of California.

Snow White learns kung fu! I got this link courtesy of Shacknews.com.

Wild and crazy Zero Gravity technology discussion.

Another one of those pics. Although I could swear that the picture is actually of Avril Lavigne. Just the way the eyes look at you, you know?

I feel much better today. My voice is almost all the way back, well I am not going to be joining any singing contests soon so it doesn't matter. I am not working today though. Listenting to Bic Runga's Sway. Beautiful song, and great for singing when your voice isn't that strong. It's written to be crooned not belted.

Did I say I was addicted to Hot or Not.com? Pictures like this one are why. Girls slay me.

Self portraits in the digital age.

Never ever do business deals with Nigerians.. I say that and I am Nigerian. The problem is that Nigeria is populated by very educated thieves. Nigerians are also very well traveled so Nigerian con artists and criminals dot the globe.
My family recently experienced this when somebody intercepted a letter from my mother to my aunt. The con artist amended the letter to include a request for several hundred dollars to be delivered to a man who would arrive at an airport shortly, to repay a debt on my mother's behalf. My aunt was instructed to keep the matter secret. The ruse was only caught when my father called my aunt and handed the telephone over to my mother. My aunt immediately mentioned the money and my mother denied having sent her such a letter. My aunt read the letter to her and my mother was shocked to see how her letter had been repurposed.
The moral of the story is that you should never trust communications from Nigeria.

If you're a comic book fan and a blogger than you should bookmark Die Puny Humans! now.

If you're a sports nut and a blogger than you should bookmark SportsBabel now.

Sick behavior by a weblogger

I just did a quick bit of ego-surfing and I was surprised by the result of putting my name in Google. This site does not come up once but a number of posts made to game programming lists do. Here are the links if anyone cares:

• GameProgrammer.Com Mailing List (by thread)
  ... Adrian Brown. No Subject, peter.bedford: RE:, Idahosa Edokpayi. No
  Subject, Martin Olsson; No Subject, Bobby: Re:, Derold; RE:, Idahosa ...
  www.gameprogrammer.com/archive/html/thrd2.html - 25k
  
  
• GameProgrammer.Com Mailing List (by thread)
  ... list, Tom Webb. hope u can help me!!!!! Nigel Freedom: RE:
  hope u can help me!!!!! Idahosa Edokpayi: RE: hope u can ...
  www.gameprogrammer.com/archive/html/thrd35.html - 28k -
  
  
• Yahoo! Groups : opengl-gamedev-l Messages :12747-12776 of 20967
  ... Idahosa I. Edokpayi, Tue 2/1/2000. 12757, Re: Change display mode on
  the fly, notnot@x... Tue 2/1/2000. 12758, Re: Where is the open source
  ? ...
  groups.yahoo.com/group/opengl-gamedev-l/messages/12747 - 21k
  
  
• Yahoo! Groups : opengl-gamedev-l Messages :12777-12807 of 20967.
  .. Idahosa I. Edokpayi, Wed 2/2/2000. 12791, Re: Where is the open source
  ? Idahosa I. Edokpayi, Wed 2/2/2000. 12792, Re: I am a beginner. ...
  groups.yahoo.com/group/opengl-gamedev-l/messages/12777 - 21k
  
  
• : By Date
  ... Ratcliff; Re: Sample Implementation Source Code and Console Targets Neal Tringham;
  RE: Sample Implementation Source Code and Console Targets Idahosa I. Edokpayi; ...
  apollo.iwt.uni-bielefeld.de/~ml_robot/ OpenGL-02-2000/date.html - 81k
  
  
• : By Thread
  ... Re: GLTrace 2 Keith Harrison. RE: GLTrace 2 Chris Jurney. Re: OpenGL window requirements
  Neal Tringham; re: OpenGL window requirements Idahosa I. Edokpayi; Re: math ...
  apollo.iwt.uni-bielefeld.de/~ml_robot/OpenGL-02-2000/ - 87k
  
  
• Geocrawler.com - gdalgorithms-list - 2002/3
  ... Mail archive - 2002-03. Thread/Subject, Author, Date/Time. ... Idahosa Edokpayi, 03/30/2002
  23:01:02. ... Maltez, 03/25/2002 16:16:10. ... Idahosa Edokpayi, 03/25/2002 08:47:57. ...
  www.geocrawler.com/archives/3/4856/2002/3/0/ - 30k
  
  
• Geocrawler.com - gdalgorithms-list - 2001/9
  ... Idahosa Edokpayi, 09/30/2001 17:37:45. ... Ken M, 09/30/2001 17:21:03. ... Jon
  Watte, 09/30/2001 17:17:27. ... Idahosa Edokpayi, 09/30/2001 08:02:11. ...
  www.geocrawler.com/archives/3/4856/2001/9/0/ - 30k
  
  
• The Blast Soccer Team
  ... Nosa's trading card photo. Top row from the left: Idahosa Edokpayi -assistant
  coach (that's me!) , Tim McCarty - coach, Devin Dickinson - defender, Scott ...
  www.utdallas.edu/~ninja/photos/blast_soccer_team.htm - 3k
  
  
• Personal Home Pages (at UEL)
  ... E Sogunwa. Noel East. Irene Ebong. Brian Eccleston. Aloysius Edoh. Uwa Edokpayi.
  John ... Oluwabunmi Onadosu Dagunduro. Evelyn Onyango. Uche Onyemenem. Oretta Gayle. Idahosa ...
  homepages.uel.ac.uk/ - 68k - 18 Sep 2002 -
  
  
• Biniunitedatl.com
  ... USA, Inc PO Box 434 Atlanta, GA 30301. MEMBERS. Mr. & Mrs. Sam Idahosa ... Relations)
  Mr. & Mrs. Gabriel Ogbomo Mr. & Mrs. Dickson Aikhionbare Mr. Joseph Edokpayi Mr ...
  www.biniunitedatl.com/html/members.htm - 4k
  
  
• Gmane -- GNU Mail To News And Back Again
  ... Joe Collins. 01.08. Re: [GD-General] Pong ball mechanics. Javier Arevalo.
  31.07. [GD-General] Pong ball mechanics. Idahosa IO Edokpayi. Back to Top.
  news.gmane.org/ thread.php?group=gmane.games.devel.general - 4k
  

It is interesting that my old personal homepage does not come up but a link to apage about my soccer team does. Weird

I now have some measure of understanding for people who conduct their lives by telephone. I used to conduct mine by email, but now that I am a substitute teacher, my wireless telephone is glued to my hand as soon as I walk in the door. I sleep with it under my pillow practically, which is the reason I get so little sleep. And when you expect a call and it doesn't come that is one of the worst feelings in the world. Trying to call somebody and not knowing why they don't answer drives me crazy; people very seldom answer when I call. I always feel like people are trying to avoid me, like I am annoying them. I know in my head it's not true but I can't help wondering.
On a happier note, I am feeling better. I'll go to work tomorrow if I can find any. Or I might not... I don't know, still waiting on that phone call.
I watched Fast Lane tonight and I was impressed. My Dad watched with me and he didn't like the sex, drugs, violence, and rock'n roll theme but I enjoyed it. I had been anticipating this show for some time and promised myself I'd watch the first episode. Now I have to find someone to tape it for me. :- (

With luck I should be able to pick up a chick who can afford my airfare back to Dallas.

Where is all the good stuff on the web? I feel as if I should be doing something useful, but I can't muster the energy and focus to do so, so I surf the web instead. Lately my surfing has been a depressingly small circle and I need more entertaining sites to spice up my web crawling.

Just discovered that Dallas had on of the most unfavorable (at least to my way of thinking) male-to-female ratios in the country. If it wasn't for the fact that guys from all over swear up and down that Texas women simply look better, I'd be packing my bags now.
While I am thinking along these lines, I wanted to say maybe I should be examined by a doctor. I was just reading something about the biochemistry of love, and I'd like some heartless-rake elixir. Being chemically hardwired to favor being a nice guy is boring.

Crystal's picture is staring me in the face again...weird, but not unwelcome.Fortunately, it's not one of those pictures in which the subject appears to be looking you directly in the eye. Crystal seems to be looking right through me but not at me. Otherwise, I'd never look away.

One of the fringe benefits of having an unpronouncable name becomes apparent when screening calls. People who can't pronounce your name don't warrant a returned call.
I am doing nothing tomorrow... so no suprise at school.

I finally met the class that likes to go to lunch twice. I didn't let them of course.
I feel really weak; my body aches, and my throat feels as if it had been given a vigorous rubbing with sandpaper. Is it flu season already?

Umm... no surprise today, maybe tomorrow.
The voice is all right so far, I scored some cough drops on the way to school. I feel better after eating some lunch. I want to take a nap though.
I had another kid get up and dance today. When I accused the kids of disrespect they claimed innocence. "If we was disrespecting you, we wouldn't do the classwork. We would just look at you crazy when you told us to do something."

I was just thinking about freak dancing again, and really it is simulated sex. Discovering freak dancing was a revelation for me; the idea that a woman - possibly multiple women - would willingly pretend to have sex with you in public, even when fully clothed, was mind-blowing. So it was immediately obvious that students freak-dancing was a bad thing; no one should be allowed to have that much fun in school, and certainly not a teacher!

I have a surprise for tomorrow's blog. Regular readers will be rewarded. :P Not that I have any regular readers. The thing I just realized, is that even though I only have each class for 90 minutes, I spend the entire 90 minutes falling in love with each group and I want the whole world to do the same. Even the kids who give me problems touch me.

A heart-warming story about the demolition of high-rise public housing in Chicago.

Has anybody in their life had occassion to get up and freak-dance other students in class or watch someone else do it? I did today, during a "sheltered" English class. "Sheltered" is a term used in the DISD for a class consisting of kids who all speak the same language, in my case Spanish, and aren't quite ready for full-contact English classes yet. The kids told me that it was an ESL class, but I have learned something - the first rule of substituting is to never ask the kids anything since they will lie. The kids can't be trusted. The kids pull something new on me every day and each class has its own special trick. They usually get away with it too! I usually don't know I have been fooled till after they leave.
I am wondering how I will teach tomorrow with no voice. Somehow it seems wrong for a substitute to call in sick. More echinacea and sleep.
Kids always surprise me with their boldness. Today the kids wanted me to teach them how to dance. I have been known to freak-dance before, but somehow, freak-dancing students seemed to fall under the heading of

Things Not To Do.

Kind of like sleeping with students.

As rowdy as the kids are, I realized I don't really feel threatened at all. No disaffected white loners with firebombs and shutguns in Dallas public schools, Columbine would never happen in a Dallas school, especiall because we have metal detectors. On the other hand, I could certainly get shot in the parking lot coming to or leaving school. :P

Blogging between periods at Justin F. Kimball High. I suppose I should be glad that when teaching in the 'Cliff and the Grove(Oak Cliff and Pleasant Grove, neighborhoods in South Dallas for those not in the know) I should be grateful I am teaching students in AP classes. As rowdy as AP classes are, I am very frightened by the prospects of teaching really bad kids.
I am feeling slightly under the weather, but I can't afford to be ill. Time for the echinacea.
Before I go, I want to throw in some comments about Bush's Iraq policy. In a word, brilliant - Bush has pushed the Democrats in America into an unfavorable position before the election and forced the UN to accept war in Iraq or face irrelevancy. He challenged the UN to enforce the terms of its own treaty or watch as the US does it for them. Democrats are forced to acquiesce or go against public opinion and they also are distracted from the domestic agenda where they are at an advantage. Bush not only saves face but comes out looking like a commanding leader despite the internal strife in his administration.

Teaching at Kimball high tomorrow... I am not sure if that's Oak Cliff, but it is definitely South Dallas. I need money for gas now!

Cowboys 21, Titans 13. :)
Quincy Carter carried the offense today, a huge improvement over last week.The defense was a disruptive force and produced a touchdown. The Cowboys could actually be very good this year, the first week's embarassment notwithstanding. The only disappointment, was the run-blocking. Pass protection was very good but the Titans dominated the offensive line in running situation. Larry Allen's health had a lot to do with that.
I need to learn Spanish, just had to reject two jobs that required Spanish. I can muddle through a conversationin Spanish thanks to two semesters in college, but I am not confident eough in what I know to risk it.

Titans 10, Cowboys 7...
Q's play is much improved from last week, when he was the lowest rated passer in the league. The offensive line is frightful though. The defense, as always has been solid, if not stellar. I am happy so far. :)
Sunday is a day of worship for me, church and Cowboys. :)

Went to a Dallas Burn soccer game with my brother tonight and scored a free "game-worn" jersey, i.e. it has been used by an exceedingly sweaty and anonymous soccer player. The jersey is wrinkled but doesn't smell. The number is eleven so the player was most likely a midfielder or perhaps a forward. Everybody advised that I dry clean the jersey before I frame it; I'll dry clean it, but I intend to wear it. The jersey has the greatest value to me when worn - no one is going to pay money for a jersey stained with sweat from an obscure soccer player in Dallas. It'll be my good luck charm. I had a blast and we went to the Old Mill Inn after the game for the "Group Leader" dinner. (Thank you Roger Allen!) The perks included were meeting the players, a coupon for a free drink, and entry in the raffle for Dallas Burn goodies (how I got the jersey). Notice that dinner is not listed anywhere as a perk of the "Group Leader" dinner. We discovered this after attempting to order the most expensive meals on the menu. Fortunately, the Old Mill was operating on a restricted menu that omitted all of the expensive items.
The only downside to the evening was that I was not in the company of a woman. I love my brother dearly, and I enjoy his company more than any other single person I have ever met in my entire life, but everywhere I go I feel like something is missing. When I lie on the couch watching television, my chest aches to feel the weight of someone leaning against it, and my arms encircle air as if to hold someone that should be there. I feel like a hollow man.

To continue about today at school though, a substitute could make his living at Spruce High. The secretary in he office asked if I would be back Monday and who knows I might. The lady in the office, seems to want me back too, she said that she'd been hearing good things about me. How she head that I don't know, I had only been there one day.
The more time though I spend in public schools, I amazed that kids learn anything at all. Today I had to skip part of the classwork because we couldn't locate the textbooks. I'd always thought that every child would have his own copy of the textbook, but the kids hear all share copies with each class the teacher teaches. Kids go, books and teacher stays. Another thing is the discplinary problems - eve the best kids can be a problem. I taught two AP classes today (supposedly the smart kids) and all that was differnt was that the kids were not as scruffy and fewer in number. The AP kids looked a if Mom and Dad might care a little and check homework but they were still rowdy.
One thing that I did that surprised the kids, was that I remembered there names. The kids did a surprisingly good job of pronouncing mine, (a few called me Mr. PIE-YEE) so I did my best to remember theirs. One student told me, "You are really good at remembering names, I hate that in a teacher!" Indeed, the kids were startled every time I called them by name. I remembered how much I feared professors who knew my name.

The archives are back, strange...

I am suffering from a little writer's block today, a first for me while blogging. Today at school I made my first serious attempt to deal with troublemakers. I wrote referrals for three students but I eventually tore one up. The principal did get the other two. A little hispanic girl came to class today in a black tie and black wide leg JNCO style jeans with a white shirt. Her best friend (well I am assuming she was) had black fingernail polish. It is very odd to see the goth and skater culture amongst hispanic teens in Pleasant Grove, but it shouldn't be surprising. The hispanic girl (who honestly couldn't have been that little since she was in a 9th gade Geography class) also wanted to know after class whether I was gay or not. Her friend quickly explained that the kids were talking about it and automatically think anyone who talks without using slang, and dresses well is gay. I wanted to laugh, but I did say that I was "straight like a board".

Blogging from a school again. Today, I am teaching AP Geography at H. Grady Spruce High School, which again, is in Pleasant Grove. I accept jobs in Pleasant Grove readily because I am familiar with the area. I don't get lost on the way there - well I shouldn't get lost on the way there, I did Wednesday.
I have noticed something very odd lately. I keep meeting people who swear up and down that they have met me somewhere. People sometimes claim that I look like a movie star or famous entertainer, but very seldom can they remember which. I should be in pictures.
When the job was assigned to me I was told I would be teaching "language arts". When I arrived I learned that "language arts" translates to English as a second language, which in Pleasant Grove means Spanish. I can understand Spanish - yesterday a girl asked me in Spanish, "what are we supposed to be doing here" (I can't remember the Spanish phrase she used) - but teaching in Spanish would be a nightmare for someone with only two semesters of college spanish to fall back on. So, the kindly lady in the office offered to let me teach geography.

Where are my archives? I am very pissed... My archives, for some reason, have suddenly decided not to appear on my webppage.

Today in school, teaching what the substitute system labeled as "undefined secondary" (theater arts) was the classic substitute nightmare, complete with children throwing wadded-up paper, screaming, playing cards, and a couple getting as close to making out as middle school standards would allow (even though the girl was a little reluctant). The teacher who handed the class over to me clucked sympathetically as she left as if she was witnessing a lamb being thrown to hungry young lions. I did however get to do the Abbot and Costello routine "Who's on First?". The problem was students regarded the class as a "goof off" class and resented any efforts to maintain order.

Pop, soda, or Coke?

One man's ability to enrage me with 5 words is amazing.

Why do Democats and so-called progressives demand silly things like:

...full public disclosure of what Condoleeza Rice has called the increased "chatter" of intelligence cables concerning a possible al-Qaida attack before it happened.

I culled that quote from this article. He has a point, and what he urges is important for America's adversarial political system to work, but what he is demanding may have been the exact thing that enabled the terrorists to succeed. When asked who specifically should be held the most culpable for the failure to stop Bin Laden, the Bush administration immediately mentioned that they had tapped Bin Laden's satellite telephone and were privy to his most private conversations and were able to use the conversations to link Bin Laden to several attacks. Until an unknown beaurecrat decided to leak the information to the press. Bin Laden watches CNN and immediately stopped using his phone. This was shortly before 9/11. Disclosing sensitive information like the "chatter inthe system" would reveal more than what the "chatter" can tell us directly. It could likely tip off terrorists to what we know and inadvertently cause another attack. I always wonder why liberals reflexively demand more information, even when disclosure does more harm than good. The public may have a right to know what, but knowing may kill them.

You know, now that I realize what a colossal opportunity I missed the first time in college, I think if given a second chance, I would chase women full time.

I am really disgusted with the current treatment of spiritual belief in popular culture. In particular, what bothers me is the encouragement to not hold concrete beliefs, but to instead subscribe to a vague spirituality. A recent example is this discussion in Slate.com. I don't like this statement in particular:

As I said yesterday, I'm not anti-religious, just anti-literalist fundamentalists; I'm pro-spirituality.

My problem is that "spirtuality" is really worthless without some practical way of expressing it. I think that most of the public's ideas about spirituality are nonsense. Parents of this generation have not passed their religious beliefs to their offspring as much and so children of today only have the vaguest ideas about spirituality and no practical applications of their spirituality.
My beef against vague spirituality is that it strikes me as the easiest way to cop out of having to do anything. Making religion/spirituality (I hate religion) a part of your life is actually very demanding and requires strict adherence to principles.
Kevin Smith's movie Dogma is another example of pop culture destroying traditional spirituality in avor of vague personal beliefs. I have read the script and love the movie, but in the end the main character also talks about moving from the strictures of traditional belief in the Catholic Church and a more amorphous spirituality. That is crap. Without literal belief of a church's orthodoxy you lose the point of being apart of that church. (I also don't like the Catholic Church.) By divorcing yourself from a church's carefully constructed spiritual framework, without replacing it with a new well thought out framework you discredit and thus devalue what the church stands for.
In effect, what I am saying is that there is no point in being anything but a fundamentalist of some type or the other. I think everybody should have a well thought out rationale for their spiritual beliefs, and from personal experience from numerous encounters with many people, only the fundamentalists in any belief had a reasonable explanation for what they believed. Middle of the road people in religion and politics do nothing and go nowhere. In politics, I think this is acceptable and at times preferable, since most people have beliefs about politics that are just as loony as what they believe about religion. It is bad for religion, and worse for us as a nation because it means that we really only hear from the lunatic fringe from every religion/creed/system of beliefs. Only the wackiest catholics, baptists, buddhists, athiests, pagans etc have anything to say because they are the only ones who know that they are saying.
So go out there and believe something.

Required reading...

It's lunch time and I am back with a bit more. The students look extremely young compared to who I normally hang out with. They are also more respectful than I expected, but not much. Of course, they have tried to take advantage of the fact that I am a sub but for the most part they haven't been able to.
The school administration attempted to organize the students in a ring around the campus just before lunch and succeeded mostly. They were supposed to lock arms but that never happened. A news 'copter did fly overhead though. Another thing that struck me is how the students were dressed. Even though it is against the rules, several girls were wearing tiny mini skirts. Everything else is allowed though it seems so you see students looking as if they were planning an excursion to the club right after class, even though none of them are old enough to get in. The boys are required to tuck in their shirts and most do. A few students were weariing their patriotism on their sleeves, and pants legs, and shorts. Well I gotta go,time for class!

Blogging during a break from teaching. I have a scant 5 minutes to write this post, but I will say that it has been intriguing to say the least. Even high school juniors and seniors look young! More later...

I swear on my mother's grave that I am going to see this movie the instant it arrives in Dallas. It also helps that my mother isn't dead.

I am very excited to be teaching tomorrow in Pleasant Grove, my old neighborhood no less. I use to drive by the school I will be teaching at all the time. The teacher was even kind enough to leave instructions and a lesson plan. Wow! Totally different than what I was told to expect. I am still nothing but a human prokchop to those kids though. I need to go to sleep though, so at least I will be a well rested porkchop.

The text of an email I sent to a prospective employer at his request:

I have taken quite a bit of time to respond to your request not from reluctance or lack of interest, but in search of inspiration.
As you mentioned, this is a time of transition in my life and an obvious time to decide where I will go. What I am looking for is inspiration. Every great achievement in my life has been the result of great inspiration. I want the next job I take to be the same. My ideal job is a company that uses technology in a new, unimagined - inspired - way to lead, not follow. My place in that company, to begin with, would be programming the software that enables that inspiration.
I spoke to Craig about your products and I am honestly intrigued. I am curious about the ways software could be used to see what is going on in the brain and make sense of test results. I want desperately to be in on the next technical revolution and I believe your company could possibly be uniquely positioned to be a part of that. I think that the next big step after the IT boom will be biological in nature. The only way I can get in on that next wave is by writing the software that makes sense of the biology.
The skills I learned in school were all geared to take advantage of the IT revolution. The most impressive technical skill I have is my ability to program. I have worked primarily in C++ and it has become a hobby for me and honestly at times it has been an obsession. Any skill I develop must first be an obsession. C++ is my most natural programming language but using other languages is not much more difficult. I am also proficient in C, Visual Basic, and I even do a little web design with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. UTD's training program in programming is so thorough in inculcating basic programming prinicples that picking up a new language is just a matter of days now.
Other than courses on C++ programming, my best course in school was Calculus. The story behind my success in Calculus begins with the fact that I had no high school preparation for advanced mathematics. I arrived at UTD with a scholarship for high scores on the SAT but with a 750 on the VERBAL portion of the SAT and a 600 on the mathematic portion - the opposite of the typical computer science major. My Dad had been pressing for me to enter MIT and one of the conditions was that I had to take the SAT 2 math test. I scored a 600 again, not enough for MIT but enough to test out of Precalculus at UTD. Skipping Precalculus was the worst/best thing that could have happened to me in my college career. I was not even close to ready for Calculus at UTD. The professors claimed that UTD was the hardest place to take calculus in Texas and I had never even taken trigonemetry. I would have made a D the first semester had I not dropped the class. The second semester I returned and made an A. Looking back at my experience and the experience of several other people is that the only thing that could have prepared me for calculus at UTD was calculus at UTD.
In spite of my computer science training, I would say my greatest asset is my understanding of written communication. At UTD I contributed to the school newspaper sporadically and I maintain a personal website with featuring almost exclusively material that I write. I regard this skill as my trump card and what truly has the potential to make me special. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to take as much time getting formal training to develop this skill or explore how it would serve me in the business world, but I see it as big part of my potential value.
I hope this explains what I am about and where I am going adequately. I apologize for the length, but I felt it necessary to try as hard as possible to explain who I am. I am hopeful that you will give me consideration for the position and thank you very much for your time. Feel free to contact me by telphone or email (idahosaedokpayi@yahoo.com).

Idahosa Edokpayi

Blogging has had a humbling effect on my spelling. I keep seeing egregious spelling errors and I am working without the benefit of spell check. Blogger Pro is looking like a generous bargain. Perhaps after I buy a domain name.

I had a conversation with a friend about the Joe Boxer commerical and he pointed out a similar commerical with a white man in it that had similar results:

ME: to me the ad is innocuous
ME: but many people have become hypersensitive
Friend: if I had just seen the ad without reading about the controversy....with that stupid grin he wears, I woulda thought more than anything that he looks gay...Uncle Tom and minstrals wouldn't have occurred to me....
ME: he does look gay
ME: I think that added to the offense a lot of people felt
Friend: =-O
Friend: :-P
ME: but so what
ME: what does it matter?
Friend: that's interesting...
Friend: it doesn't, not in the slightest...what I think is funny...
ME: yeah
Friend: is that some people have said that the reason people are responding to the ad is precisely because he's black....that because he's black and looking kinda dorky and silly..it makes some people subconsciously "nostalgic" for the old Jim Crow portrayels of blacks in popular culture...but that argument doesn't hold because....
ME: yes
Friend: they are forgetting about this VERY famous commercial...I think it was a McDonald's or Burger King commercial...that ran in the late '80....
ME: yeah
Friend: in which there was this brief clip..no longer than Vaughn's...that showed this fat WHITE young man doing this silly dance....
ME: uhuh
Friend: and he became FAMOUS because of that and started making personal appearances and even had his own fan club....for about 15 minutes....
ME: yes
ME: so people laugh at fat white dudes dancing too
Friend: people were responding to the joyousness and silliness of his dancing...not his skin color...so all those people saying people are responding to the boxer just cuz the dude is black are full of it...

The one problem is that the first actor was fat. It is possible that people were mocking his fatness. Still, it is evidence that the ad is not dependent on the actor's blackness.

Hallelujah! The DISD substitute system has finally seen fit to give me a job!

en·nui Pronunciation Key (n-w, nw)
n.
Listlessness and dissatisfaction resulting from lack of interest; boredom: “The servants relieved their ennui with gambling and gossip about their masters” (John Barth).


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[French, from Old French enui, from ennuyer, to annoy, bore. See annoy.]

Ennui is one of the many demons I fight. Why am I not motivated? So what I wasn't born to wealth and power, I don't need those things to get where I am going. All I have to be is motivated. I don't have to be intelligent, handsome, tall, or anything - just motivated. Why can't I bring the same desperate desire to succeed that I had in soccer and every sport I play to the rest of my life?
Why do I lose almost every game I play in regardless of my ability relative to the competition? Why does it not matter that I want to win more than anyone else? Why am I always saddled by teammates who are inept, clumsy, and uncaring? Why is it that when I have teammates who care and are able I am not allowed to be a part of their success? Why?

My Dad just showed me a baby picture and pointed out that I was so happy. (Note the use of bold and italics. I call this super italics.) He wanted to know what happened to that happy child. He said it was my fault that the child was gone. I don't know what happened, but I don't have the time to worry about it.

The DISD's automated substiute teaching telephone information system leaves much to be desired. I have yet to successfully land a substitute teaching job and the lack of timely notification is to blame. No jobs are ever available until late in the morning when there is too little time for me to actually make it to the job on time. This morning the system assigned me two jobs. The first at Lincoln High had already been filled. The call came at 7:43 and I wasn't told that the job was unavailble for at least another 30 minutes - precious minutes wasted when school starts at 8 am. I immediately called looking for another job but I quickly discovered that the teacher who I was replacing didn't even teach at that particular school anymore. There was nobody to replace... Why is everything in my life so hard? Am I the only person, for who it seems that things that things that should be simple and uncomplicated become long, tortuous affairs requiring multiple phone calls and much waiting? I am not angry, I just honestly want to know. What are the major difficulties in the lives of most college grads my age?

I don't know the people involved in this story, and this happened some time ago, but even time cannot lessen the tragedy of Naytero Ormond's death.

You know I was just thinking that if people visit the links on my site I am generating traffic for other people who care nothing about me and wouldn't divert any traffic my way. As old school and unhip as it is, I wonder if I could join some sort of link exchange for bloggers, or as they were first known, webrings.

Auto-save in Microsoft Office has spoiled me. I keep losing posts through clumsiness and I am frustrated when I can't recover them with a simple "undo" command.
I ran into a great blog that I wrote quite a bit of stuff about before I erased the last post. He also linked a realy good article from a converted dove.
My Dad wants me and my brother to come up with a system with publishing invoices on the web so a customer can clearly see what has and hasn't been paid for yet. He wants it done tomorrow! Fun!

Somebody by me some clothes!

Somebody finally has a reasonable suggestion about what to do about Iraq.

I just checked... in 4 weeks I have written 20 pages of text in my blog, 11, 722 words, 53, 455 characters, 130 paragraphs, and 835 lines.
At this pace in a year I would have 260 pages; 152,386 words; 694,915 characters; 1,690 paragraphs; and 10,855 lines. Not a lot everyday but if I could do something productive with my time at the same pace it could be really special.
I am always amazed at my ability (and the ability of others) to process text.

Would everybody just lay off of that Joe Boxer ad? I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that the black activists in the political correctness movement would react in horror to the sight of a black man dancing happily in his underwear. I just want to know why these people insist on being killjoys? Why can't black people allow black people the pleasure of being black? Why can't the actor in the ad dance if he wants to dance? At issue is the opinion that the ad is a success because the actor is black. I admit that a white man in the ad probably would not have the same effect. Black people seem to be reacting to the perceived stereotype of the old "black" entertainers, often just white men in black face paint sporting foolish grins. Black people resent having been mocked for entertainment. The average white person knows nothing of this particular grievance and is probably reacting to another subtle stereotype. White people (and other ethnicities also) tend to think of black people and black men in particular as sexual superiors. In fact, I would not be surprised if white men actually feel a little threatened by a muscular black man in his boxers. The silliness of the dancing probably defuses a lot of this sentiment though. The truth is though, that my analysis and just about any analysis is going to be complete rubbish since the ad wasn't conceived with any deep motive in mind. The truth is that people like to dance in their underwear and watch other people doing it. Vaughn's (Vaughn is the actor in the ad) dance evoked an instinctual response from the ad agency and it touchd a lot of other people too. People just like goofiness.
Read the article on slate.com that alerted me to this debate.
See the ad.

The great substitute teaching experiment was a bust today. I'll have to make another attempt tomorrow. I rolled out of bed today at 8:30 and called the system. I got a job at Lorenzo De Zavala Elementary. The problem was that this school was on the south side of Downtown Dallas and I live on the north side of Dallas. When you take traffic into account, the commute takes at least an hour. The principal, being a conscientous man with deep concern for his students' educations, distributed them among other classes by the time I arrived at 10 am. The moral of the story is plan ahead. Scheduling jobs at the last minute is not good and taking jobs that far away is silly when you drive a 1987 Camry that makes a harsh grinding noise whenthe automatic transmission shifts gears and burns inordinate amounts of gas. Oh well...

Noel Ignatiev is a white guy who thinks white guys are evil. Rachel Lucas thinks he is smoking some very expensive crack. I agree. Visit Mr. Ignatiev. Ask for a hit of what he's smoking. By the way, Rachel Lucas is cool. This adventure in blog land was brought to you By Gene Expression!
Pete Sampras actually won a tennis tournament! You could make a career out of beating Andre Agassi.
Can someone explain to me exactly what went on in Reliant stadium last night? I suppose I was silly for expecting so little from the Houston Texans and so much from the Dallas Cowboys; but I am a fan and objective reasoning about my team's chances really isn't possible. My Mom looked on as my Dad cursed and I abused the helpless pillows decorating our den. The Cowboys lost miserably because of their inept offense. Quincy Carter simply stank and the running game never got untracked. Really, Carter should have thrown at least three inerceptions, but Aaron Glenn has hands carved from stone. (probably the reason he's a DB and not a receiver) The defense was even better than it was last year if you exclude the slipup that allowed David Carr to throw his second touchdown. The Texans could not run the ball at all on the Dallas defense. Often it looked like the linebackers were eavesdropping on the Texans offensive huddles and were just waiting for the snap so they could hogtie James Allen one more time. La'Roi Glover led the manhandling of David Carr and was in the backfield all night. He even snagged an interception. The offense always had poor field position and never seemed to be able to do anything to improve it. Special Teams was also a nightmare because Billy Cundiff missed a kick and Jason Bell came back to haunt his old team like the Ghost of Kickoff Coverage past. Wide Reciever Randal Williams played well on kick coverage I thought. It's a shame someone that big and fast can't catch passes. Randal Williams ran a 4.1 forty in training camp - more than a tenth of a second faster than Joey Galloway's best time. The Cowboys seemed really promising this year but the offense looks like it will once again disappoint. Serious adjustments need to be made NOW!
I can't help going all crazy about the Cowboys, I have only watched every game every Sunday for the past 16 years. The Cowboys are almost my second religion - and I don't even consider myself a serious fan. There are people in Dallas whose levels of fanaticism for all things related to the Dallas Cowboys would frighten you.

Texans 10, Cowboys 3... WHAT!?

In reference to what I said here, I think, now, that there will always be a place for textual information. Visual and audio communication does not supercede text. Because people can watch video, and listen to CDs doesn't mean that they stop reading books. Blogs, as a written media, will still exist. The hype will most likely have faded in the future though.

Miami crushed Florida. Doh!
Serena Williams dominates Venus again. They are so good it's boring. They've taken a little drama out of the women's game. I am willing to bet a few people are very displeased with the current state of affairs as the sisters rub a few people the wrong way. (in my opinion through no fault of their own). The big story is the tennis game between a couple of old guys that they're holding in Arthur Ashe stadium.
Odd dream update: This morning right before I woke up I had this dream. It was very odd. I saw this woman enter a storefront and I heard something about Kevin Faulk, who if I am not mistaken is Marshall's little brother, and Kevin Faulk owned a dating service. Only when he walked up it was a muscular white man standing there which is odd since Kevin Faulk would be black. Maybe it was Kevin Falk. Which would be odd, but they don't exactly explain spelling of names in dreams. I think I thought it was Kevin Faulk the football player in my dream too. I kept seeing a counter, the same woman walking up, and Mr. Falk/Faulk walk up too.What this all means I don't know.

A simply beautiful blog template here.
Government projects are not all doomed to failure and heinous cost overruns.
I went to see Mostly Martha tonight. It would have been a really great date movie, if it wasn't for the fact that a friend of mine, whose opinion I respect, told me that movies are terrible dates, and also that I don't know any girls who want to date me.
A friend of Bug Selig's spotted David Wells at a restaurant.
Let me take a moment to tell you about AOL and the great instant messaging wars. Does anybody remember the uproar when Microsoft tried to make MSN Messenger interoperable with AOL Instant Messenger? I do! AOL immediately modified AIM and decried Microsoft's attempts to "hack" the system. Microsoft soon gave up after taking the uncharacteristic position that all Instant Messaging software should support "open" standards and adhere to a common framework. AOL eventually agreed to join an industry wide effort to formulate instant messaging standards. In fact, as part of the conditions of Time Warner's merger with AOL, the mergedcompany was required to open its instant messaging network. AOL instead closed its network and promised to comply as soon as its engineers had finished making the necessary modification for opening the network. We are still waiting.
Into this mess walked the good folks are Cerullian studios. Their product, freely available from trillian.cc, is a universal instant messaging client that can operate on: AIM, MSN Messenger, IRC, ICQ, and Yahoo Messenger networks. People (like me for instance) who before had to open multiple im clients to talk to all their friends, could now talk to anybody from one Instant Messaging client. Best of all, users could stick it to AOL Time-Warner - who now owns AIM and ICQ. What is more, it gave harried AIM users an attractive alternative to the notoriously buggy AIM client. AOL constantly updates AIM now to introduce incompatibilities with Trillian, in contrast to Microsoft who actually notifies Cerullian of possible problems in Trillian and provides information on how to interact with MSN Messenger!
Here is an example of Microsoft playing the good guy and AOL playing the bad guy. The problem is that AOL pretty much always plays the bad guy and gets away with it.

I need to work out! I went to work today so I again have to fight the twin demons of laze and fatigue.
I want to eat but nothing is ready, well Mom offered me fufu, but really, I'd as soon eat refuse. I cave in every once in a while and eat it but I try to minimize the damage. Mom likes it because she can make the stew once and a week and subsequent meals take only a few minutes to prepare. I can't decide if I like fufu less than moin-moin. (Nigerian dish of ground beans served with oatmeal) I'd say it's a tie.
Miami played Florida today. I was cheering for Florida to knock off the Hurricanes, but only so that the Longhorns could take the title.
For whatever reason, today I feel as I have just recovered from a long illness and have suddenly regained my strength. I think there has been a break in the clouds overshadowing my life, even if I can't say why. Oh well...

I slept really well last night! Wow!
I need to start looking for a job again. I have work, but my job(s) right now are not a be all end all solution.
I checked the statistics and my web site has visitors other than me! I am fairly certain I know who most of them are. A couple of random people get linked in from Blogger but it's mostly friends of mine. Hi Everybody! I should probably try to dwell on happier subjects so they don't think I am on the verge of suicide. I just get extremely pissed.

It's a blog. It's not special. It's not any more unique than any other blog, but that makes it special in a weird perverse way. Read it any way. Oh and EAT THE POOR!

My Dad just asked me "You can't sit and talk and laugh here like a family?" Honestly, the answer right now is no.

You know an interesting feature I could put in the blog? A daily thumbnail of my desktop picture. Or maybe a screenshot of my desktop... The problem with that is I always maximize every window so it fills up my screen, and I keep my desktop completely barren on purpose. You wouldn't see anything useful or entertaining. Oh well...

Howard Fineman has a reasonable analysis of the current political landscape. Essentially it is business as usual.
I must have a low opinion of human intelligence but the ingenuity employed in naming blogs amazes me. The actual blogs often leave much to be desired, sort of like movies with cool titles and trailers but are actually just medicore films. Even so, I read good blogs more often than I expect too. Actually, very seldom do I ever see blogs with unimaginative titles. (like Who is Idahosa Edokpayi?)
I have a confession to make. I am addicted to hotornot.com. I don't actually spend alot of time rating people or checking my rating. I like reading the profiles and seeing what they say. Hotornot also has a "meet me" feature which has demonstrated to me how little discrimination I employ when choosing potential dates. I think it is a sign that I am shallow and superficial; I don't mind being shallow and superficial - I do mind the creeping suspicion of dumb/naive that comes with it. What is worse, is that the entire problem is in my head. 99% of all my problems are mental. I have always felt that if I could master the mental aspects of a challenge my body would always follow - I am actually capable of anything. Don't laugh! I have superpowers! :) Who else do you know who has ever dropped a pen and kicked it back into his hand, and reflexively catches every object thrown at him?
It's friday night and I am home. I am sinking deeper and deeper into the sands of loserdom. Somebody get me out of here! I should at least workout (which I have neglected to do since Tuesday) but I am feeling sleepy and lazy and don't want to do it. I have to get up early again to work tomorrow with my good friend Ed - he wanted me to be at his house at 7 am, but we both know that would never happen. I should go to sleep then, but I went to bed early yesterday and got up at 4:44 am! Horrible! I've been up since. (Well except for sleeping in Ed's van on the road while traveling in betwen jobs. Next Monday can't come soon enough!

I had something really smart to say until I saw that picture of Crystal again. Everytime I see it I try to divine what it is, exactly that I think is so special about the picture.

Oh NO!

I use webshots to set my desktop picture randomly and every so often a picture of Crystal, a friend from UTD, pops up. I put it in webshots because... I don't know why. Actually I know why, because she's beautiful. She's one of those girls who could never admit to being pretty out loud (well for that matter when I am told by girls that I look good I always deny it too) but she is. Which only serves to make her more appealing. Last time I spoke to her about it, she pointed out that one of her eyes was slightly larger than the other. Nobody cares! There is something intrinsincally beautiful about the two pictures of Crystal I saved. I can't say what it is and I am not a photographer, but something about the dress, the way she is standing, and the hairstyle... I don't know. You could probably show it in a gallery though. I am having trouble actually locating the original. :( After hypervenitlating about her picture, I am sure my audience (of three people) would love to see the picture. She's way to short to model, (well runway anyway) but there's just something about her you know? I honestly don't have a crush on her. I am just amazed everytime I see that picture. I might as well put it in the blog too.

I am sad. Robert Wright may have finally persuaded me that missile defense is unnecessary. September eleventh was a graphic illustration of his contention that missiles from hostile states are not the greatest threat. Attacks from hostile individuals are. I still contend that just because nation-states are not the only threat doesn't mean they can be ignored. Large armies provide no real defense against scattered terrorists and we should probably not build larger armies to fight them, but missile defense could be part of a strategy to prevent other nations from taking advantage of our smaller military. More missiles and fewer men? Mind you this defense is only because I like missile defense. I just hate being wrong and conceding defeat to a liberal like Robert Wright!

It just occurred to me that the blog might be something of an anachronism in the future. Computers will likely be small and portable and storage space will have increased more than a hundredfold. Storing simple text when you could store high resolution video and audio would be silly. People could make digital movie logs. So...what do I do? Make a movie?

Also the web is ****ed.
I hate what my life has become, a mere shadow of barren existence. My family operates seamlessly around me as if I wasn't even there. In fact, if not for the fact that I eat and defecate, my existence has no impact on anyone at all. If I were to stop being, it really wouldn't matter. Of course my family would go through the necessary motions of grief, but because that is what families of the deceased and or missing do. They love me, but people love their dogs.
I have friends but I don't see them, and everybody knows that people you don't see don't exist right? The telephone doesn't ring, the answering machine holds no messages (mostly because the stupid thing was off!), and the email inbox remains empty. I know I am young, but really, if I wasn't here who would care?
I need to get a life. I need to work out. I need to make new friends. (how I don't know as I don't have any viable social meeting place) I need to get out of the house.
Now that I've said that, I have an idea for a book. I'd call it Dystopia and it would be a book in the form of a blog about the future and all the bad things that are going to happen there. I'd need to research futurists predictions of what the future will look like, emerging trends, and likely geopolitical scenarios. A great place to start would be futurescan. Before writing the book I'd have to create a virtual universe for the protagonist to live in. I'd generate a profile for the blogger including things like height, weight, eye color, ethnicity, pets, favorite color, political ideology, favorite sport, nationality, etc. I would have to write a short history of his life up to the point of the first entry in the blog. I'd have to document the geopolitical landscape of his world. I would have to compile a list of predictions about his world and how it was different. Obviously, the predictions would be mostly bad things since his world is a dystopia - the opposite of utopia. More accurately, his world will be dystopian. Bad things will have happened but with more nuance than the world of Neo in the Matrix.
At the very least, writing Dystopia would be something to do. I wouldn't have time to kvetch about how horrible my life is.

I just lost a post. I am pissed.

If you're not reading Robert Wright you should. I believe he's wrong but that's beside the point. The world is on the verge of becoming a very less than happy place and America has already been blindsided by it once. The future (or at least the future as the good folks at Wired are imagining it) could end up looking very much like the Matrix or Blade Runner or worse. Man is curently busy perfecting the weapons for his own destruction. Will Woman be able to stop him or will she be busy picketing Hootie Johnson's golf tournament because he wouldn't let her join the boy's club?
Girls, I've seen the boy's club and it isn't all that great. Start your own and I'll join tomorrow!

I read Kausfiles religiously and often read other blogs that he links. This lady almost had me as a fan until I read something about Andy Grove, the head honcho at Intel, being a corporate statesman. Andy Grove is a merciless and paranoid taskmaster. His very presence is enough to reduce grown men to tears. I'd shoot a dog before giving it to him. I've been cheering for Intel's demise for years. Intel at one time was a monopoly just as insidious as Microsoft until AMD declawed them. They are also the perfect example of why the government should not get involved. The market is catching up to what many thought was an unconquerable beast.

You know, strange as this may sound, it has never been my intention to ever date a model.

Someone please shoot me if this becomes one of those lame poetry and feelings blogs. Tomorrow I'll eat some red meat and try to grow some manhood back.

I didn't choose to love you,
Love for you was bred in me.
I didn't choose to hate you,
Hatred grew in me unwonted by the days.
Now I must choose to leave you,
My heart lies in shreds by the way.

I really want a new suit. I like this one and this one, but I'd sacrifice children to the river god for this one. I suppose liking clothes and shoes as much as I do makes me a woman, but a woman who once dislocated a former football player's jaw with one punch.

Nothing is more dispiriting, more soul scarring than dead love. People who love you because they know they should, but almost would rather not, who you in turn love because you can't help it but almost would rather not. We love each other with our lips and minds but not with our eyes and hearts. People who you desperately want to run away from but feel tied to as if by an umbilical cord. People who if you felt anymore love, confusion, and pain because of them you just might shoot yourself; at least then what you felt would be simple.

Parents prefer that you listen and not watch. Children always watch but seldom listen.

By America's definition and measure I am black in skin color only. I don't talk black, I don't think black, and I don't feel black. I am first and foremost an American. My family is Nigerian, and I am a Nigerian citizen but the Nigerian culture I have absorbed as compared to the American culture I have absorbed is very small. Anyone who has heard me speak knows I have an odd, unplaceable accent, and I am a college graduate. I am
sure peole are also aware of the rate of incarceration of young black males. The fact that I have graduated college makes me different from 90% of the 23 yr. old black males in Dallas and probably 70% of young black males nationwide. I don't fit the norms of this country in any way other than that I am foreign. The people I have the most in common with are other children of recent immigrants and Nigerians in particular. I don't associate much with other Nigerians though so my peer group is really small. I feel like an oddball in just about every social setting I am in. So new social settings aren't really that big of a deal since I am an outsider most place that I go. I don't fit, I won't ever fit, and I am tired of trying. (Doesn't mean I'll quit though.)

I am tired my wrist hurts and I don't feel like blogging tonight. :(
Having thoughtful email conversations wears me out. I thought of several intelligent things to write tonight while replying to email but I can't think of any of them now. I was actually exhausted before I sat down at the computer but I am bushed now.
Substitute teaching is delayed for now until I can get in touch with the office to find out why the system won't accept my social security number. Bummer...

I don't care what anyone says, Alex Rodriguez is the best player in baseball. If I was Tom Hicks I would have probably given him 50 million a year. I am a Rangers fan and yes I am bitter.
What is it with blogs that have titles in English but everything else in another language? I pick one at random to read and surprise! It's portugese. Really I should be able to muddle through it because I can (or at least should be able to) read Spanish. Oh well...

Humanity abhors a void.
The most important grounds on which I reject atheism and evolution, is that atheism is ugly. There is no poetry, no beauty in the belief that man arose from the primordial ooze. The thought that ultimately, my ancestor had no opposable thumbs and no ability to speak is repugnant to me. The idea that our world is the result of an extremely fortunate accident is uninspiring. What scientists propose is about as likely as winning the lottery every day for a year. Has anyone asked why enormous amounts of time are necessary to account for the rise of the universe? Because if a million monkeys typed on a million typewriters long enough eventually they would have to produce Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace to satisfy every eventuality.
Even scientists and atheists who reject God as the crutch of a weak mind worship their own gods. Science is their god; Darwin and Stephen Hawkings are their prophets. Even if the matter of the universe was once concentrated in an infinitetismal dot that exploded to produce our universe, where did the dot come from? The matter of the dot just is? The universe is eternal? If they answer with claims like that they sound like God in the Bible saying he is and always was. Unconciously even they are crowning a new God even if their God is the dot from which all matter arose.
What is worse, certain scientists, like Stephen Hawkings, have made their worship of science more explicit, saying that science can explain the metaphysical. These men and women seek to destroy the magic of everyday living and dethrone God and destroy religion (religion can die for all I care though) and replace God with science and religion with education and position the scientist and educators as high priests of the new religion.
Should they succeed they will have failed. Science is based on skeptical analysis of known facts. Should they acheive their goal of inspiring everyone with blind acceptance of science as the only answer science will have lost its most vital asset - people who don't accept anything less than the truth. Science as a religion will destroy science as science.

Here a few more things that I could tell you: that I am human and I want to be loved, and that several people will be very angry should they ever read the last post.

What is this blogodex thing and how do I get one? I submitted my site to the blogodex project at MIT, but a blogodex seems to be something more. As soon as I figure it out I'll post more links.
The question I have is why does anyone care that I have a blog? My friends certainly don't, my family does but mainly because they are my family. If my family didn't care then I would really be up a tree. I am a semi-talented writer and possess a decent sense of humor but so does nearly every other blog author whose blog I have visited! Every blog seems to be owned by an aspiring writer with rapier sharp wit, engaging personality quirks, and actual entertaining lives. Do you know what I did in the last three months? I rediscovered the joy of television! I watched every minute of Road Rules: Chicago (in one day!) and watched the better part of an entire season of Buffy! While these people were busy meeting the movers and shakers of the world, loving, living, and learning I was watching Trading Spaces every day! What can I do to make this blog unique?
I could make this blog a repository for gossip about my church. The problem is that most of the really shocking things have already happened and I no longer speak to the gossipers very often. I could tell you I was once busted for skinny dipping with some friends at an apartment pool late one night by the pastor of the church who then told my mom. I could tell you that a young girl in the church had sexual intercourse with somebody she met on the job, got pregnant and married the young man, and both attend the church today. I could tell you about how a deacon in the church who has eight children commited adultery with a woman in the church and the woman had a little boy, divorced her husband, and left the church. I could tell you that the deacon now teaches sunday school again in the church. That an assistant pastor (whom the pastor has referred to as a wolf from the pulpit) and took a family in the church with him. That the father in that family had commited adultery (several times), started drinking, and attended strip clubs with a young man in the church. That a group of young men in the church (me included) once left church visitation to go to a nudie bar. I could tell you that the pastor once protected a man in the church from prosecution for molesting his step-daughter. That the man did it repeatedly and that his sons picked up on his behavior before the step-daughter reported him for doing it again. That the same girl married a young man in the church, then cheated on him with his friends, and at one point slept with so many diferent men at once that the child she conceived could easily have been fathered by any one of them. I could tell you that they aborted the baby. That the young man she married cheated on her too with a girl he had been expelled from the christian school for french kissing in a car when he should have been at work. That he decided that for the amount of trouble he was in he should have slept with her after all like she wanted to. That he did later after convincing her that he loved her and would marry her. That he took her virginity and innocence with his charm and good looks. That he did it to several other girls too. I could tell you that his wife was the first woman who turned the tables on him. That upon hearing that she was seen speaking to an old flame that he attempted suicide aboard a Navy carrier and was disharged from the Navy. That they have a beautiful baby girl with the same name as public high school girl who once attended the church. That the high school girl was a minor and had sex with a young man in the church who is older than I am. That the young man she had sex with so shamed his parents that they had to leave the church. That he once called the church claiming to be John Stossel from ABC investigating the church on charges of child molestation. I could tell you that a young man was so frustrated in the pursuit of a young woman by her uncle that he eloped with her. That he took her right off the church parking lot no more than 20 minutes before church. I could tell you that one of my brother's best friends growing up once sexually molested his sleeping female cousin. I could tell you that a good friend of mine went to Bible school in Florida and was arrested for selling drugs on the church parking lot. I could tell you that he married a girl in our church and has a son and another on the way. I could tell you that the preacher distrusts and maybe even hates and fears him. That as the price of not making my life a living hell while I remained in the church he required me to no longer speak to him or the rest of the people associated with him. I could tell you that he offered one of my friends financial help for doing the same. I could tell you that I gleaned most of my information from the pastor's sermons in which he named no names (just as I name no names here) but described the situations in enough detail that anybody who was reasonably aware of what was going on in the church can do what I have done. I could tell you that the pastor loves his church dearly and would die for them. I could tell you that my church is respected nation wide by churches of its ilk.
I could tell you a lot of things but I don't know if I will.

Now that I have posted the nice links I will proceed with a not so nice one. Men no longer have a monopoly on the "angry" adjective.

Really great poetry I was referred to by Blogger.com. I really liked the post titled God's Message to Women.
That said I feel as if I could use an editor or at least a refresher course on high school grammar. I spend half of my time now fixing typos and wondering if I am supposed to italicize, put in quotes, or use bold text. Perfectionism is its own punishment.

Sunday is a day of rest, so I am going to take it easy tonight.I've been really active this week, but that's mostly because I've been having so much fun. All the people who read this blog, (all 3 of them) should have a happy and safe Labor Day.

On the way home from church this morning, my mother and I were discussing the correct pronunciation of my last name and she told me some interesting things. All Nigerian names are sentences in a Nigerian language. My first name, Idahosa, means: "I am listening to God". My last name, Edokpayi, means: "Only the edo tribe is worthy of glory". My middle name, Igbinoba, means: "I have seen the king". My other middle name, (given to me by maternal grandfather) is Irubo for "a child is better than wealth". My paternal grandfather gave me his name as my first, and an aunt named me Igbinoba because she really had seen the king. All my names but Omoviro are Benin.
My mother told me a little more about my family history and why my Dad is so proud of the family heritage. The king (the oba) in benin had a castle surrounded by a moat, and all the important people - his servants - lived within that moat. The people who lived outside the moat were merely villagers. I suppose that is why my family chose such a proud name.
What is more, I am the first son of a first son. By Nigerian tradition I am to inherit the family possesions and become the next leader of the family. Weird huh?

And Venus is the venus razor from Gillette.

I went to see the musical today with Marcela, Crystal, and - God love me I don't think I ever really knew what his name was. In no way could this be termed a date, more of a meeting of the lonely hearts club.
I made it to the musical an hour late, but it didn't seem to matter, everybody was happy to see me and Crystal was more than happy to explain what I had missed. The show was titled 42nd Street. I really regret missing the chorus girl asking if she could be a star through her singing. The man she asked stared at her breasts and replied, "If you can make them sing too!" The guy-whose-name-I-never-knew-and-was-too-polite-to-ask-again spoke only Spanish and didn't understand the joke, so Marcela had to explain why everyone was laughing. Being a good church girl the explanation was most likely rather difficult for her, but then Marcela seems to have a knack speaking about embarassing topics.
I had never been to a musical before and my first impression was that the story was contrived and ridiculous, but the singing and dancing were worth the price of admission. Most musicals are apparently just excuses for talented performers to wear scanty sequined costumes, sing upbeat music to the accompaniment of an orchestra, and dance in tightly choreographed formations.This a good thing. Britney Spears, N'Sync, and the Backstreet Boys do the same thing (without the pretense of a story) and make tons of money doing it.
The award for funniest quote goes to Crystal for saying, "Your bum is your booty." I took second place with my answer to Cystal's observation that a lady attending the musical was pregnant, "She can't help it she's pregnant!" Crystal replied that she most certainly could have. It's amazing what I talk about with people who I meet at church. Crystal kept admonishing Marcela for talking about how much she likes her Venus, ironing her stomach, and how she got a bruise when the hanger hit her breast. Good church girls are not supposed to talk that way.