State Fair: It's not THAT square!

So. Is anyone interested in attending the State Fair with Elli and I? We're thinking a late afternoon-evening expedition: check out the exhibits, the sales areas, the livestock (in my case, anyway; call it a remnant of my childhood rearing horses and cows), GIANT CORN DOGS, and LIVE SHARK SHOW!! Woohoo!!*

We're not sure yet on timing. If you're interested, speak up! We've a van and the will to go this year. Don't make me go with my family again!**

Bring your sweeties. Bring your kids. Bring your sense of corny fun!

* Ok, I know it's not THAT exciting, but I love sharks.
** Hmm, I guess technically, if I go with Elli, I am going with my family. Cool.

State of the Mahdi

I've been married for almost two months now, and I'm still jazzed and happy about it. Last night, I woke up at about 3:30am, looked over at Elli, and got a huge dopey smile before I went back to sleep. It's grand.

Which is not to say, of course, that I'm completely stress-free. My CBEST* examination is this Saturday, and that's stressing me out a bit. While it's certainly true that I'll ace the Reading Comprehension and Writing sections, the Mathematics section will be a challenge. If I fail that section, I can retake it in October, but I'd really rather pass all three sections at once. So I'm reviewing the relevant skills, re-training myself to do mixture problems (which is one of my weaknesses) and quadratic equations.

Preperation for school is underway, and I'm eagerly looking forward to every one of my classes -- I was able to get classes that not only meet the requirements for graduation, but which fall within my interest range. And one of them, a class on Anthropology, could even help my Stargate SG-1 game! Sort of.

Anyway, time to get back to work.

* That's the California Basic Educational Skills Test, an examination all prospective teachers in my state must pass.

Consumer Whore! Consumer Whore!

(this message, while real and truthful, is mainly brought to you by my caffeine-addled brain).

Despite the fact I have officially switched to Mac for almost all my computing needs, I still want quite desperately to upgrade my PC replace the dinosaur I call a PC with something more modern. I mean, Zathras (my PC) has served me well, but he's dying. It's time for a new Zathras. Unfortunately, I'm not the one I have to convince. Honey? Darling? ;)

City of Heroes calls to my soul; you cannot possibly understand the desire within my blood. Or maybe you can, I dunno. CoH is my Sims2.

Zathras sad. Very sad.

Racists. Lovely.

There's an interesting article in the latest issue (Summer 2005) of The Intelligence Report about the Minutemen group. I was heartened, after beind disgusted by the descriptions of the actions and speeches of these vigilantes, by the following quote from a white local:

They were talking to me like they're white supremacists or something, and they were assuming I must be too just because I live here and have to deal with all the illegals. But I don't care too much for those kinds of attitudes. That sort of thinking should have died with Hitler. - Richard Hodges, resident of Cochise County

He does also say, I should add, that not all of them are racist. But those that are seem to outnumber those who are not. Another excerpt:

Back when he was a kid, Hodges said, the average Mexican didn't have any reason to sneak into the U.S.

"They had it pretty okay in Mexico, so when my daddy found a Mexican on our property, he'd put a shotgun on him, you bet, but it wasn't because he didn't like Mexicans, it was because he knew that Mexican was probably on the run, because their criminals would run to America just the same as our criminals would run to Mexico. My father would order them to take off their pants, them give them a choice: either walk back to Mexico with no pants on, or wait for the sheriff."

Things are different now.

"I see illegals on my property all the time, and I don't point a gun at them. You can tell just from looking at them they're no threat. They don't scare me. They're not out to get me. They just want to go on their way. Sometimes I'll call Border Patrol if it's a really big group. Other times I just say, 'Oh, what the hell,' and let them be. I do worry that some of them are coming into the country for a welfare free ride, and I'm sure a few of them are criminals, but I talk to these people a lot, and I'll tell you, most of them are coming here to work. Pure and simple."

The immigration problem can't be solved in America, Hodges said. It can only be solved in Mexico.

"I was in the Air Force, and I saw how the Soviets did it. Sure, we could build a wall, and put machine-gun towers on top, and create a no man's land with a minefield, and we start machine-gunning people and blowing them to bits, and it might curtail them a bit, but it won't stop them from coming so long as we allow the Mexican government to keep treating its people so poorly. You can put the Marines on the border, you can build all the walls and bring in all the Minuteman Projects you want. They're not going to stop. There are millions and millions and millions of poor, desperate people in Mexico, and hunger is a powerful motivating force."