David's Tangled Thoughts

My mom went on a cleaning binge yesterday--way more than what is normal. It was like she wanted the house to be perfect. And then she started preparing some Filipino food like lumpia and pancit. I thought that she was going to host a party for her friends. Nope. The first guests arrived a few minutes ago and turned out to be my Aunt and her kids. No Filipinos. Apparently, the family was coming. The family. It's too late to run away! I'm currently hiding away in my room because I know the questions are going to start flying in my direction on where I'm working, where I'm living, and the question they all want to know... do I have a girlfriend. *Sigh* Update 2215 Well the guests are gone and I can breathe a sigh of relief. I managed to keep away from the conversation that the adults were having by taking care of my little cousins. Thankfully, I escaped most of the prying questions and yet at the end of the day, I still having a burning hole in my heart.

Because Season was a little impatient... Yesterday, at a rally in Ohio, Sen. McCain announced his running mate— Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin . I saw this as I was eating lunch at work. And when I saw the ticker announcing who it was my thought was, “Who is that ?” I’ve heard of her but only in passing stories. (Really, who pays attention to Alaskan politics that much?) I was thinking that it might have been Mitt Romney. When it comes to presidential campaigning here in the States, the general rule of thumb is that the presidential candidates (Obama and McCain) start out by shoring up their bases and move toward the center. Arguably this campaign cycle is different already since both Obama and McCain are portraying themselves as centrist candidates. In addition to that rule of thumb is that the VP pick is the whip keeping the base of support in line as the candidate moves toward the center. Now, that makes perfect sense with Obama’s pick, Sen. Biden. He’s a lefty that is well know

Just a heads up, things are going to be a little dry around here. It’s the end of the month and beginning of the next so I’m going to be up to my ears in reports and extra work. When the company I work for bought a new building, it hired in some of the workers that were employed at the departing company. They started last week and things seem to be going great from our point of view. They are experienced in similar work so training them has been relatively easy. One new face in particular started coming around yesterday. He was being shown around by some of the big bosses rather than the regular supervisors. Turns out that he was a supervisor over at the departing company and is now being groomed to take a position here. Since I’m moving to the “new” building, I’ve found out a few more people who will be joining me. It’s a really good selection and I’m eager to work with them. One thing that has been worrying me is who the warehouse supervisor will be. I like the supervisor that I have

What I like about sites like Wikipedia and YouTube is to hop from article to article, video to video. While I was surfing YouTube, I came across a set of videos that allowed me to view the movie “ Beautiful Thing .” The movie* is a coming of age story centered on Jamie and Ste, two teenagers living next to each other in blue collar London. Jamie is an introverted guy who is getting bullied at school. Ste passes as a regular classmate with an aptitude for sports but suffers from an abusive father and brother. This abuse drives the two closer together and they begin to develop feelings for each other. First reaction: Geeze, I wish this had closed captioning on it! When I go to England, I might being saying “huh” way too often. I can certainly see myself being in Jamie’s shoes. I had a very lonely time in high school but I mean that in the more emotional sense. I was never ostracized or bullied but I was always holding back—that there was a part of me that I never wanted anyone to

It was already a joke when Obama promised to tell his supporters, and not the media, first of who is Vice President pick would be. He would do it via text messaging. As if the news media can't get those messages at the same time? Not that it really mattered anyways since word got out long before the phones went buzzing the middle of the freaking night. Seriously... what the hell. Oh, it's Sen. Biden by the way. Blech. *sigh*

With only a short time left before Sen. Obama reveals his running mate, rumors are heating up that it will indeed be Sen. Evan Bayh . Now supposing that this was true and supposing that it was Bayh running for the Presidency and Obama for Vice, I would tell you right here, right now, that I would be voting for the democrats this fall. As much as I like Sen. Bayh, I really don’t see the VP as being all that important of a position. He’d be an ear in the Oval Office, a rubber stamp in the Senate, and a scapegoat on the stage. I mentioned a while ago ( here & here ) that some groups in Michigan were trying to get a Proposal on the ballot that would, among other things, downsize the government in the legislature and the courts. The proposal has been rejected.

The company that I work for recently bought an additional building (where it is, I don’t know just yet) to accommodate expanding business. The higher volume clients are being transferred there. I thought, “Good riddance, S0/\/y.” Turns out I am going with them. Now I can take this two ways. I can be pissy about having to move just when I got to liking where I was at and the privileges that came with being a manger-minus-people to manage or I can see this as a shakeup that will bring something new. I choose the later. I learned about this around three this afternoon when one of my five bosses came up to me and said that I will need to get ready to move sometime in the next couple of days and that basically I will be doing the same things I am currently doing—just removed from my normal stomping grounds. The way I see it, I will still handle all now-eight buildings when it comes to monthly counts but only handle the last building’s daily inventory shtuff. When we all went on break

Two articles came that I read over at the State News. It amused me. Which one got screwed here? In particular I like how, “The court also entered an order prohibiting [regular MSU student] from purchasing, possessing or consuming illegal drugs or alcohol for one year.” Considering that the student is 19 and two years away from buying alcohol anyways and illegal drugs should not be purchased anyways... it was funny.* *Okay I know it’s part of the probation. If she does buy alcohol or illegal drugs, then she can be dragged back into court and have additional punishments served up.

Just how many people out there are pill-popping timeshare owners? It seems to me that they must be a rather large demographic for spammers to go through this much hassle.

"I'd had relatively little experience with men by then; you could count all the men I'd slept with on your fingers and toes and have a few left over." Fingers... and toes ?! What man whores are you comparing yourself to with "relatively little experience?" JCA, I think I'm gonna be depressed.

I’m not feeling a topic today so a number of things off the top of my head: The Berrien County Youth Fair has started and will run 'till this Saturday. I’m not really in the mood this year to do more than a couple days. Besides, it’s hard to find someone that wants to go. One of the things I find frustrating with my friends is being able to do something with them. Often times they don’t want to do things that I want to do. It’s rare that I turn down any of their suggestions. Are mine just that bad? I doubt it. I’m getting a little fed up having to work around their preferences. I miss Season because of this. I wanted to go on two trips this summer. One to the Upper Peninsula and another to Kentucky. Both aren’t looking likely because, again, no one to do it with. I think that I will do a trip alone. I don’t know if that is just sad but I don’t want to miss out on seeing new places because other people can’t be bothered. I’m starting to read the Federalist Papers . I’

A letter was sent out from the Department of Human Services in July informing parents that the state is going to start charging a $25 fee on child support. This fee applies to parents who receive more than $500 a year in support payments and are not on nor have been on state aid. To be somewhat fair to Michigan the main fault lies with the federal government. This fee, charged by the state, is to comply with the Federal Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 . Because Congress was so busy spending your money on things it can’t afford, it now has to find a way of making up the difference by taking away from children. It doesn’t matter that this fee is going to affect people who most likely can afford it or that the amount is low in comparison to the average amount of payments a person receives annually. It just flies in the face of common decency. If our federal and state governments are in need of cash, they should just suck it up, be transparent and raise our taxes, cuts spending, or bo

As a person who doesn’t appreciate performance art as much as I should, I must say that I was blown away by the Opening Ceremony for the Olympics. The scope, choreography, symbolism, and beauty were incredible and something I have never seen before. As impressed as I was watching it on television, I can only imagine how incredible it must have been to see it in real life. The presentation was divided into two parts: Historical China and Modern China. I was much more impressed with the first half—Historical China. I thought that the symbolism and artistic quality was much more evident. Don’t get me wrong, the second part was impressive but it seemed to be too interpretive. The parts with the moving printing blocks and the naval exploration were my favorite parts. Both used massive amounts of participants creating an awe inspiring show. The blocks had a surprise twist at the end and the maritime show had a great score that made me feel how big China is. Zhan Yimou, China, and comp

My cubicle mate and former supervisor looked like she was ready to kill at the end of today. As I was doing the end of day data entry she was trying to track down some documents that DHL still had--documents that we should have had this past Friday. I listened in as she got the runaround. I told her on Monday that since we know that the stuff is in Chicago, I’d gladly drive there if I got paid for mileage. Hell, I’d go on my off time to get them. While the docs are important, I wanted an excuse to drive to the city and have my gas paid for. Five hours is all I would ask. After hanging up for the last time, she told me that DHL wanted to send it over themselves. Something about sending it to Ohio and having it Detroit by 3:30 tomorrow afternoon.* Well we absolutely need those documents by 4:00 and unless they were going to send a plane and parachute it in, we weren’t going to have it in time. So it looks like the suggestion that I made way back when is going to be implemented.

<---See also: " Go Vote " and " What’s Left of the Michigan Primary ." It’s Tuesday evening. Have you cast your vote? Michigan’s second primary, which present voters with citizens who want to run for state offices, was held today. Well, the far western counties in the U.P. still have about 20 more minutes as I am writing this. As I have mentioned more than once before, I do not vote in primaries and this event was no exception. Plus there’s only a few offices I’d vote for anyways. For those who do not know about Michigan voting system here we go: As you may well know, in November we have an election that will decide who the next president will be. Also on our ballots will be all the offices that are up for grabs all the way down to our lowest and local offices. Depending on where a person is registered, they may be voting for President, Governor, a Congressman (or Congresswoman), a Senator, all the way down to township clerk or what have you. But before

When it comes to using new media to keep in touch with people, a lot of my friends are behind the times. We're talking about the late 90's where the techiest way to reach someone was through email or dialing up someone on the cell (because contact lists are to cumbersome). When I created this blog oh so many years ago (in internet years it's pretty frakin' old) I thought I was participating in something new and cutting edge. In reality, I was riding the backwave of the blog phenomena. Podcasting was the new big thing. Then there was the vlog. I've tried them both and it really wasn't for me. Something new that has probably passed its hype peak is Twitter . It's a sort of microblog that you can update particularly from a mobile phone. Luke has one on his site and is a pretty good user of the service. Quite a number of my friends on Facebook use a similar service to post updates on what they are doing/feeling/whatever. Over the weekend I came pretty

Kraig and Stacey are back from out west. I went their party that they held last night. I’d like to say that I had a great time but that would be stretching it a bit. BUT, I’m glad that I did go because I was happy to see Kraig and Stacey again. My trouble was connecting with the other people that were there. It was something that was not lost on Kraig for he did mention it to me. I knew some of these people in high school and now it was awkward for me. I’ve “changed” since the last time we were together and so have they. It felt like I was with strangers who were impersonating people I knew from my past. I don’t know why it was different for me to reconnect with some others like Kraig and Season a few years back. Perhaps it was Kraig’s friendly and disarming personality. Maybe it was Season’s acceptance. All I can say was that it was weird. I suppose the big part of the awkwardness—at least on my part—comes from me being gay. I’ve only come out to a few people. (By the wa