Hump Day Ho Down

Well, I'm past the flu. After my third day of serious illness yesterday, I went to work today, sweated a little, but generally felt unaffected, even chipper and revitalized after a four day weekend. Unfortunately, sitting at home all day does give me much to write about unless it's the scifi anthology I was reading or how I squished a hydra head in God of War - neither endevour of which I finished.

I do think this article about Walmart is interesting (Washington Post via Kevin Drum via Three Way News), particularly because I had this argument with a friend at work today about how Walmart had it's own magnitude of obnoxiousness I wasn't willing to patronize. This just helps itemize some of the reasons (MPR had a good bit on the other day about how the American consumer's overriding desire for cheap over all else coupled with the rise of Walmart may have actually kick started offshoring and definitely accelerated it).

Star Tribune...conservative op-ed rag ? At least by a ratio of 33:19 (The Rake via MNSpeak). Isn't that the verse I always see on cards at football games? Wait...no...only 21 chapters in St. John, but there is a 19:33, "But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was not dead already, the brake not his legs".

Finally, do not read this book, "The Devil: A Biography" by Peter Stanford. I almost never quit a book halfway through - I think you can count the times on one hand - even when it sucks and is still heading rapidly downhill, like Steakley's Vampire$ (I'm sorry if you liked Vampire$, but it's just bad writing). Stanford's book isn't poorly written, it's just uninformative and unfathomly boring - I can't believe he spent 120 pages (where I quit) without telling me anything that I'd be willing to take away, particularly when there's so much that can be done with the subject, as is obvious with Bernard McGinn's Antichrist (Amazon). Stanford just went on and on like a Master's student trying to get enough on paper to qualify for a thesis without actually doing any research. Who knows, maybe the second 120 pages are the most erudite prose ever put to paper. Maybe those pages are top to bottom facts that can only be found there. But prefacing them with those first 120 pages dooms them to being forever ignored.

While sick and asleep for over ten hours I had a dream about a stop sign. In this dream I destroyed the stop sign by kicking it, beating it, hitting it with a bat, shooting it, driving over it, exploding it, and applying various other forms of destruction. My dreams usually don't mean much at all, so I'm guessing I'm really pissed at a stop sign. I know my Dad is really pissed at a sign in Tucson, so maybe they're genetic dreams.

Finally, I just ate a pink grapefruit and my fingers smell like a joint - that's weird. Then again, maybe not, at least according to Answers.com, "Sweet Tooth #3, a fourth generation, third backcross to Sweet Pink Grapefruit mother". And to top it off, it makes Pooteewheet seem six years younger (the grapefruit that is).