David's Tangled Thoughts

The Fab 5 should have come to visit my family this Memorial Day. It was all about colors and decorating, and fashion. Whew, I might have had an aneurism if it had gone on any longer. Kohls was having a sale on shoes and clothing and so I thought that I would take advantage of it. Mom has been carefully eyeing some couches so she could replace the old on in our main living room (yeah, for some reason we have two.) Since we were both headed for Mishawaka, which is the shopping Mecca for Michianna, we decided to just go in her car. I would drop her off at the J.C. Penny’s specialty store and I would continue onto Kohls and Scottsdale’s. They would call me on the cell when they needed to be picked up. See, not much of a selection in style or colors... I’m not much of a dresser. I have no fashion sense. Nope, that all went to my sister who has a wardrobe worth half the house. She’s been voted snazziest dresser at her high school. How ‘bout them apples? So looking here, we can pretty much de

It’s been a while since I put up my blog roll. I thought that I would add in some of the new blogs that I’ve run across and who I visit on at least a weekly basis. Give them a glance, I'm sure that they will all appreciated some extra traffic. Malkin won't notice but I'm sure she would appreciate it. Michelle Malkin Do I love this woman or what? A beautiful conservative Filipina. I would probably look like a leftwing nut job standing next to her. Where There Were No Doors Another blog from the British Isles . For some reason, I just keep coming back to this one. Maybe it’s those little jabs at America ? Could I be trying to balance my own views? Kurticus Maximus "Elitism: It’s Lonely at the Top, but it’s Comforting to Look Down Upon Everyone at the Bottom. " If my cousin Jason, and a few of his friends could be wrapped up into one person, I think he would come close to this guy. Major Mike I like the military. If I had more discipline, I’d join i

Read American Warmonger's article first please. "...creates one thousand times the force of gravity to spin the dirt out of the air so nothing gets clogged, ever. I just think things should work properly." I can probably repeat that entire Dyson commercial in my sleep and do it with the dead-on accent. One of the things about the commercial was that it never said how you can buy one of these vacuums. To my knowledge, I had never seen one in a big box retailer (you know like Wal-Mart, K-Mart,... N-mart.) That coupled with Jeremy's post, I thought that these things had to be ordered by mail or were sold at real housewares stores. The $400+ price tags are a bit high for the demographic that regularly shops at Wal-Mart. With Wal-Mart actively turning their regular sized stores into Supercenters, they are at the same time, introducing trendier products designed to bring in higher class spenders. Target has used this strategy for quite some time and they are gaining on Wa

I’m actually in a very good mood today. It’s one of those, I’m glad to be alive days which is a welcomed departure from the last couple of days. Most of the bloggers that I follow seem to have taken the Memorial Day weekend off. They probably have some awesome plans and maybe they will share some of their adventures when they get back on Tuesday (or Wednesday depending on how fun their holiday was.) As for me, I’ve got the holiday off. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it. Maybe we’ll grill something for dinner but other than that, I’m not expecting much of an observance. Since I’ll have the time, maybe I’ll crack open that LSAT guide that is sitting on my dresser. I’m thinking about going to law school but I want to make sure that I am mature and ready to take such a step. If I do this, I will be doing it on my own. No help from family. When I do go through the guide, I want make sure that I can devote the time it needs.

…whichever you’d prefer to call it. That’s what I did today. Little did I expect that during my trip, I would question my relationship with my friends. The first part of the day was me riding around in my own car running some errands and doing a little shopping. You know, not much to write about. Latter in the evening, Sara gave me a call. I had thought that we were going to pick up Adam and go Frisbee golfing. We make it over to where Adam is and he decides not to come with us. Let’s just say that things were said and done to make everyone in a tense mood. I can’t tell you the details but there are problems that may not be able to be worked out between the three of us. As a large lighting cell came over, we ended up just driving around the county and talking. She had mentioned that she may be thinking about moving to Seattle where she knows some people. My initial reaction was of fear. Can you believe it? I thought that I was going to loose my friend

From BBC news. I thought gun control was tough, but knives?

I've been listening to this song quite a bit. It's not new to me as I've heard it every once in a blue moon ever since I can remember. I just recently downloaded it and so I am learning all the lyrics. It turns out that I was way off when I sung along to this in the past! When traveling with my dad, all you will hear on the radio is talk radio and oldies. I used to hate it but I've come to realize that I've adopted the same habits. So if you are ever riding with me, you are going to hear either talk radio or oldies. Alright, alright, you may catch me playing some pop if my friends are with me. One of the things that I like about oldies music is the stories that go along with them. Today's pop music is just crap that gets repetitive. Read through the lyrics: I can see her lyin' back in her satin dress In a room where ya do what ya don't confess Sundown ya better take care If I find you bin creepin' 'round my back stairs Sundown ya better take care

Okay, three things happened recently that compelled me to post this one up. First, the whole deal with Briana. Second, Kate had something similar posted on her site. Finally, NDT directed me another personality test which made me think of of the first thing. So apparently I am a Haughty Intellectual. Hmm, sounds about right although I would argue that I'm somewhat extroverted. I have a freakin' blog for Pete's sake and I post comments on other blogs and sometimes email complete strangers. Haughty Intellectual You are 71% Rational, 0% Extroverted, 28% Brutal, and 57% Arrogant. You are the Haughty Intellectual. You are a very rational person, emphasizing logic over emotion, and you are also rather arrogant and self-aggrandizing. You probably think of yourself as an intellectual, and you would like everyone to know it. Not only that, but you also tend to look down on others, thinking yourself better than them. You could possibly have an unhealthy obsessi

It appears that the French is going to vote "non" on their referendum to the EU constitutional treaty. As I said before, if they wanted the EU constitution passed, they should have ramed it through the state legislatures rather than going to the public. I'm delighted, purely by American self-interest of course.

Well actually it’s not. It’s more like a mindless rant but hey, most of my posts are. Most people know that I am a Star Wars fan of eps IV-VI but not of I & II. These new ones that Lucas has put out just can not hold their own against the original three. Only the special effects are superior but even they can get to be distracting. Since Star Wars is such a cultural phenomenon, I had to go see these movies even if they were ten times worse than they are. It’s been about a week since Episode III was released and it was a good time to go now that the crowds have died down. I don’t know about the rest of you out there, but I just can not sit in a crowded theater. The last time that happened was when I was in third grade and The NeverEnding Story 2 came out and I had to be separated from my Dad in order to find a seat. If the movie is a comedy, I like a larger crowd because my embarrassingly awful laugh is easily drowned out. For anything else, I like to have s

When I started out this blog, I had considered that some of what I would write would someday come back and bite me in the ass. And I guess that’s what has just happened. I’m sure that most people have done it before. I’m talking about ego surfing. You’ve done it right? Right? Okay for the few out there, ego surfing is where you type in your name into a search engine and look for web pages that just might happen to mention you. For example, a google search of my name will put me on the second page under a webpage for SIAS (Summer Institute for the Arts and Sciences). Well apparently, Briana Doyle did a little ego surfing and wasn’t too pleased with the result. She found my blog. Uh oh. More specifically she found this post . Now all comments on my blog are directed to a yahoo account that I keep for most outer-circle communication. What I mean by that is that there is one account that I use just for friends, family and such, then there is the outer-circle

The toddler that got caught Please read this article . Regional must have gotten a little worried. As a result, our store had to pull theirs. Of course, it’s the back room guys that have to deal with it. They parked them in the area where we put our surplus pallets of merchandise. Since inventory, the back room stock still hasn’t been cleared out. If we get three trucks we will seriously have to kick stuff out onto the floor. Damn store policy on that one. Wal-mart pulls their toy vending machines.

…so, Kate , you might not want to read on because I’ve got spoilers! So the season finale went well for CSI. It wasn’t the best finale I’ve seen but it was still good. You know how some series like to go for the season cliff hangers? I hate them. Star Trek was one of them and it killed to wait over the summer. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case here. The show started out with Nick Stokes being called out to a scene. It was a set-up to lure out a CSI agent for capture. That part didn’t make sense to me as the kidnapper was betting that an agent would come alone. If that cop hadn’t lost his cookies, how on earth would he have successfully gotten away with Stokes? So Stokes was buried alive with air being pumped in and with a live feed of him provided to the other CSI agents via web. The kidnapper demanded one million dollars. Well, of course, the government makes it a policy not to pay ransom so it was up to Catherine to go to her father and get the money.

Kevin Reardon, you’re my hero. (Read that like Cameron Fry’s character in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.) No, really you are. Who is Kevin you might ask? From what I’ve seen he’s a dispatcher at Luton whose adventures in the airline industry are chronicled on A&E’s “Airline UK .” I probably should say he was a dispatcher because, by the way things are going for him, I think he’s been fired by now. Not wanting to fight my way through the Star Wars geeks on my night off, I just stayed at home. Dad was watching a marathon of Airline UK that he’d never seen before. CSI wouldn’t be on for a few more hours so I watched with him as I prepared some more cover letters and resumes. Anyways, just watching the show, you can’t help but actually liking Mr. Reardon. He’s just a hardworking guy that always seems to get shafted. Reported, cautioned, and stuck with a boss that doesn’t seem to give a rat’s ass about him. Yet, he grumbles on through his job with slight defiance

<< See the original post . The Detroit Free Press came out with another article about the mayor's spending habit. Click here to see it.

I’m right in the middle of season and series finales now and I’m deciding how much effort I want to invest in trying to see them. I’m actually going to cover most of the shows that I actually watch so don’t think that I watch much more TV than this ‘cause I don’t. The Amazing Race: The season finale for this was actually pretty good but I swear it had to be staged. Before the season aired, they made a huge hype about two teams: Rob & Amber, the contestants from Survivor; and Ron & Kelly, the Army POW and beauty queen. My sock in TAR went down for their use of celebrity or high profile teams. To be realistic, I swear that Ron & Kelly would have to be Philiminated early. Rob & Amber probably should have been Philiminated halfway. I mean, those are the odds. But somehow these two teams plus Uchenna & Joyce made it to the finale. Something stunk of “rigged.” In the end, however, Uchenna & Joyce won the million. All I wanted was one of the re

Early last week my dad called up. He was at the farm in Benton Harbor doing some planting and other stuff. I never answer day calls because they tend to be telemarketers so he got the answering machine. So he starts describing how he's being attacked by turkeys. You can hear in the *ding**ding* of the truck so I could tell that he was taking shelter in the cab. Outside I could hear the gobbel, gobbel of the offending bird. Over the next couple of days, my Uncles Art and Kenny, and Grandma all have encounters with these same two birds. Yesterday, Dad decided to take the camera with him just in case he ran into them again. As you can see, he did. I would have liked to show you the video clip, but I don't know how I would post that. Considering I have dial-up, I probably wouldn't have enough patience to upload it anyways. So the pic will have to do. The rest of my family seems content to back off from the turkeys. I dunno. If I was there, I'd be chasing them wi

Sara and I during our trip to Cedar Point last year. Getting over the cold that I must've gotten from Kate , I called Sara last night to see if she was in town yet. She has just graduated from Central Michigan University and has come back to Michianna until she finds a job. All the townies (that I care for) are back together again! She could tell as soon as I got her on the line that I had a cold. In fact it was one of the first things she stated. I'm glad she's looking out for me. This morning, I was still feeling a little scratchy and coughy but I was mostly good. We haven't seen much of each other since we've been separated by school and it was good to see her again. Since I have to get to my job later tonight, we just decided to go to lunch. She's pretty much in the same boat as I am when it comes to the job. She doesn't have one. I do, but considering it pays less than $12,000/yr, I don't consider that a job by any means. You suck Wal-mart! Anyway

Adam and Joe at Captiol Hill. House of Representatives to the left. Senate to the right. A little while ago, I saw some footage that CSPAN had of the Senate and House of Representatives yesterday when they had to evacuate as a result of a violation of the restricted air space around the national capitol region. I have never seen politicians move so fast. If only they could do that with their work. The last time I was in Washington was in spring ’01. Since the September 11 th attacks, I wonder if we would have been able to do half of what we did. It just seems that there is so much tension and security there, that it would have taken out some of the fun and freedom we had. Casper , (guy I can't remember), Captain P., Bernadette, Joe, Adam, and I at the Capitol, overlooking the Mall. Take for instance, the Capitol. Aside from the security check points at the entrances, and the occasional off-limits corridor, we pretty much were allowed to go w

The mayor of Detroit, Kwame Kilpatrick. I saw that my cousin came across my blog recently. Jason , I hope that you found some of it to be interesting. While going through the news services, I came across one that I will post just for you. Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick wants to add another 2% tax onto fast food service. Yup that is in addition to the 6% state sales tax. Rush calls this a fat tax, something that he had predicted in 1995 when cigarettes were openly being over-taxed. It uses the same argument that taxes are supposed to discourage people from their vices. Bullshit. It’s just squeezing more money from products and services that the government knows people won’t give up. It’s quite ingenious and insidious. When this whole tax thing got out of control with the tobacco companies, the states said that they were going to use the money to fund anti-smoking programs. Then when they won the multi-billion dollar suits, they said that they were going to us

I was feeling pretty shredded last night. In fact, I still feel that way as I write this now. All those damn allergies I guess. I’m popping pills left and right. Anyways, yesterday was an easy day at work. There was only one truck to do and even though we were a little short staffed, we got done with it early on. So to fill up the time before we could pull out the pallets, we helped the stockers with their freight. I went to grocery side to put up papers and chemicals (things like laundry detergent, cleaning supplies, and toilet paper.) While I was there, I ran into Kraig and Chris L. Now considering a previous post , you would think that I would yet again be embarrassed to see old friends see me in my current situation. To some extent, you would be right but that night, I think I was so glad to see some friendly faces that I got over it really quick. Both of them went to high school with me. Chris was in my class while Kraig was in the one behind us. Kraig’s

Dang! I forgot to buy Mom's card last night. Oh well, I probably won't see her until tomorrow anyways. I was thinking that I could take her and the family out to dinner now that [ahem] I can afford it. And in my opinion, good food is always better than a Hallmark card that costs 3 cents to make but is charged 2 dollars for. Also Happy Mother's Day wishes go out to the following family members: Grandma (paternal grandmother), Nanay (maternal grandmother), Aunt Tina, Aunt Julie, and Tiya Connie.

I got this from Drew's site . Click here for the original link but I don't know how long it will be valid. So here's the article in its entirety: Lawn ornament kidnapper warns: Pink heads may roll CENTRALIA, Wash. -- Police received a report that six pink flamingo yard ornaments were kidnapped from a yard in Centralia. The victim received a note from the kidnappers demanding that a ransom of ten candy bars be left in a mailbox. Otherwise, the note says, pink heads will roll. (Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

I just had a couple thoughts on the UK elections that took place last night. PM Blair has won re-election albeit with a lowered majority. Every now and then, I would check with the BBC to see if there were any updates. Polling information wasn't readily available (either that, or I couldn't find it) until early evening. I just gave up and tuned in after polls over there had closed and final projections were given. In addition to the news sources, I checked out a couple of UK blogs such as Kate's , Billy's , Jim's , and Ian's . There seemed, from what I read, that there is heavy dissatisfaction with Labour with its supporters jumping either to the Liberal Democrats or the Conservatives. While I was watching a clip on BBC World News, one of the voters were complaining that there weren't other parties in which they could transfer their vote to. There were Labour supporters who didn't want to vote for either of the two large opposition parties. While this

Considering what I wrote in the previous post, I considered waiting about what I had to say. But since tomorrow is a new day... gas fell below $2.00! $1.99/gal! Woo hoo, it's a good thing I had to fill up before the weekend. I heard that they reached $1.80's near Plymouth.

This is the intersection of U.S. 12 and South 3rd Street in Niles. This intersection as gotten some attention of late due to a rash of accidents here. As you can see, there are flowers attached to the median advisory sign. They are not related to what is happening there now. A while ago, the parents of a senior high schooler was killed here. I can not imagine what that fellow must be going through. Since he is 18, he will be treated as an adult and will be on his own. Admittedly, I don't know the whole story but from what I've heard, it seems to be asking too much. Even at 23, I'm not sure what I would do if both my parents died. What makes it even more heart wrenching was that apparently, his parents had no life insurance. There were no death benefits. There is an effort to install a left turn only signal at this intersection. The white car to the far left is where the problem is. From this white car's position, he can not see very well into oncoming traffic (in which

With a day off to enjoy myself, I checked the papers to see what was playing at the local movies. I have been living under a rock for the past couple weeks so I didn’t know what was out there. Wonderland, it turned out, was playing The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I remembered many years ago when my dad was talking about it. Although I had never seen the movie nor read the book, I knew that the answer is 42. The movie was certainly up my alley but not with any of my friends. Sci-fi is just not for them, although this wasn’t strictly sci-fi. They would have appreciated the comedy definitely. I had resigned myself to just catching it when it got to video until my sister came in from track. Half-heartedly I asked her if she wanted to go see it. What do you know? She went for it. Thirty minutes later, we were on our way. The very basic idea of the story is that Earth is destroyed by intergalactic aliens that want to put in a bypass through our system. Art

Curt, Kris, and my sister's friend--Katrina . Everybody now.... "Blech!" Beth's unknown date, Beth, Kris and No. 1 Dancing (or at least making the attempt.) I'd say go to my sister's blog to learn more but sadly she doesn't ever update her blog. She just likes to let it sit.

Due to inventory and the subsequent mess that it has caused, I have been spending more time out on the sales floor. Over the past couple days, I have run into people in which I am embarrassed to show my face too. They know that I have worked retail during high school, but we all thought that I would be past that by now. The first was Bruce. His brother, Brad was in the same class as I. But I went to university with Bruce and had our Integrated Arts and Humanities class together. We both graduated in December with me a semester late and him a semester early. I assume that he has returned back to Michianna because I saw him strolling through the store. He saw me trade in my business suit for a smock. I tried not to seem aware that he was there. Next came Mr. R___. He was my brit lit and mythology teacher in high school as well as my track coach. It was kind of hard not to avoid him. So I swallowed the big lump in my throat and said, "hi." He did a double take, not expecting me