Boring useless political entry

As you can tell, I haven't been very good at keeping this blog up. Work's been busy and all my creative juices are flowing into a harmless email flirtation that requires me to maintain a steady stream of wit. However, I would like to take a quick moment to express to you how much I FUCKING HATE SOCIAL CONSERVATIVES.

Okay, that's a bit extreme. Actually, they're usually very nice people in person: good neighbors, friendly at work, trustworthy. Still, I really can't fathom their incredible hatred of gays.

I bring this up because it seems that there are now only two issues that get this segment of the population aroused: abortion and homosexuality. I can respect being against abortion. In fact, I sit the fence myself on the issue, and swing back and forth between the "pro-choice" and "pro-life" poles depending on my mood. Frankly, I think some people aren't incensed enough about abortion. If you truly think that it is murder, if that's what you really believe, then complacency with our current system is like, well, those guys who went along with slavery or the holocaust.

But I really don't understand why anyone would get so upset over homosexuality. I mean that literally; it makes no sense. You may think it's gross...hell, I find it a little bit icky. I don't want to see two dudes making out on the street. But I also don't want to see those ugly hairless dogs either, but I don't get offended when someone walks one in the park. Obviously there will always be people who think with their guts rather than their brains, but it's amazing that there are enough of them to form a mass movement.

None of this is new, of course; it's all been said a million times. I just had to get it off my chest following a very weird discussion at work. Sorry about that and I promise to return to cute pictures of birds soon.

The birds and the bees

A fat momma robin has built herself a nest over the gutter by our house. She's been calling it home for a few weeks now, but just today I noticed that she has chicks. They're hidden by the nest except for when she's feeding them and they stick their skinny little heads up for lunch. Living in the city, sometimes you forget that there is a separate world going on outside of human society. Besides the robin and other birds, there are gangs of grey squirrels, a family of possums, the occasional raccoon, and numerous house cats, all of whom stop by our backyard from time to time.

Here she is in her nest:



And here she is perching on our fence:


I haven't been able to take any photos of the chicks yet, since they only rarely make an appearance. I'll keep you posted on how they're doing. Her nest seems relatively cat safe, so hopefully they'll survive to adulthood.

Also, here's a rose from the garden:


Pretty nice, eh?

Intelcon eats its own

Long time no update! I've been pretty busy this week at work, having suffered through two days at Intelcon (Intelligence + Conference = IntelCon. It's not one of Optimus Prime's enemies). Unisys sponsored a booth there and since very few actually qualified people were able to attend, I got to man it.

Intelcon is basically a trade show, not too different from similar such events for industrial lubricant manufacturers or computer accessory providers or what have you. There was a big conference with lots of interesting people giving presentations on biometrics and data mining and stuff like that. That's to lure people in, who are then supposed to wander the exhibition hall looking to buy "solutions" from the various vendors in attendance. The only problem was that Intelcon was a relatively small event; all the real movers and shakers were at DODIIS in Dallas. So instead of intelligence officials wanting to buy things I know nothing about, I was approached mainly by other vendors wanting to sell things to Unisys that I have no authorization to buy.

It was disconcerting because everyone else assumed, by virtue of my attendance, that I was a highly placed Unisys employee. People kept introducing themselves as "CEO" or "Executive VP" or "Managing Partner." Yeah, hi, I'm Tom, I'm a systems analyst, I've worked here for four weeks, and I make roughly .001% of your salary.

At our booth we were demoing a biometric application, which Unisys has developed in partnership with a company called ImageWare. This was pretty cool: I got to see some nifty Mission Impossible type stuff, like an iris scanner. ImageWare had sent a salesman named Bill to set up and run the demo. Bill is the kind of person who talks compulsively about his private life with complete strangers. Over the course of two days, I learned:

1) that ImageWare makes the most robust biometrics suite on the market,
2) that Bill doesn't much like Bush and will vote for McCain in 2008, and
3) the names, personalities, life histories, and sexual characteristics of every woman Bill has been involved with recently.

It's more women than you might think, incidentally. I'm glad that Bill was there, because his non-stop girl-stories made the time go by. Good luck this weekend, Bill, wherever you are!

There was also another representative from Unisys who was there during some of the conference. Pete is a pretty high ranking executive and seems to know virtually everyone in the intelligence community. He's the kind of person who can tell you how George Tenet's personality changed after 9-11. And, unlike a lot of the other people (from various other companies) whom I talked with, Pete really seemed to know his shit. I like Pete even more now, because today he sent me an email praising my work during the conference, and he CCed my boss and the head of my department.

In other news, it now seems that I won't be going overseas until the second of June (roughly). The plus side is that I'll get to attend my sister's college graduation.

All hail corporate dissidents

There's an underground Bush-o-phobe lurking in my office! I went to send a fax today and all of the preprinted cover sheets looked like this:

In case you can't read that, it says "Save Our Freedom, Impeach BUSH Now!" I guess that counts as a "special instruction."

Since I didn't feel like getting fired after not even four weeks on the job, I printed myself up a clean one. But three cheers to the man or woman with enough guts to endorse impeachment on an official Unisys document. Keep up the good work; maybe tomorrow all the faxes from the third floor will endorse intervention in Darfur or higher fuel efficiency standards for SUVs? Just a suggestion.

And in another triumph for sanity, Zacarias Moussaoui was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. It's the little things that restore your faith in the jury system, sometimes.

Always look on the bright side of life

Little things that make life bearable:

1) Waking Up At Night And Discovering You Have Plenty Of Time Left To Sleep.

This list is dedicated to last night when I woke up having to use the bathroom and discovered that it was only 4 am. What an incredible feeling! I still had three hours left to sleep! I was so overwhelmed with joy that, right there on the spot, despite being groggy and only half awake, I decided to write a list of wonderful things.

2) English Accents.

I'm primarily referring to the voices of those BBC announcer guys, not cockney, although it's pretty cool too. For some reason, sounding British automatically confers believability on a person. I think the primary reason we're in Iraq is that Tony Blair said it was a good idea. Have you ever heard a Brit say "controversy?" They put the accent on the second syllable! con-TROversy. Delicious!

The only thing better than Brits are Asian girls who've studied in England and have those clipped, precise Oxford accents. God that kills me.

3) People Who Are Friendly In Traffic.

The other day I was stuck in the usual backed up Beltway rush hour traffic. I was smoking a cigarette, so my window was open and consequentially everyone on the Inner Loop could hear Neko Case blasting out of my stereo. A couple pulled up next to me in a convertible and the woman leaned over and said "Hey, I love that album!" Then traffic started to move and I lost them.

4) The Annual Member Sale At Politics & Prose.

Twenty percent off of everything! Yesterday, I bought:

• Blind Spot by Timothy Naftali
• Nature Noir by Jordan Fisher
• A Pretext For War by James Bamford
• The Unfolding Of Language by Guy Deutscher
• Take Care Of Freedom And The Truth Will Take Care Of Itself, edited by Eduardo Mendieta

All for 64 bucks! What a deal! That last one, incidentally, is a collection of interviews with Richard Rorty, who I really ought to get better acquainted with, apparently.

Four items are all I can think of right now. Eventually I'll probably do a (much longer) list of things that really piss me off. Number one: waking up at night and discovering that you have to get up in two minutes.