Category: general

Tonight I told Sean I had something to talk to him about. He was in the middle of something in his game, and he took off his headphones and said, “What’s up?” But I told him I didn’t want to talk to him about it while he was playing, and not long thereafter I left the room.

Awhile later he got to a stopping point and came into the office. I sat him down on the spare bed and told him my news: I’d received a very generous and interesting offer earlier that day, and was interested in his opinion. I think I knew my decision before I even told him about it, but I wanted to talk to him anyway.

He initially simply said “It’s up to you,” but I pressed him for what he thought he might do in my position, and he told me what I thought he’d tell me, which just so happened to be the conclusion I’d come to. I told him I was pretty sure I agreed. Then I held him for awhile.

Finally he got up to head back to his game. But before leaving the room, he kissed me and said, “Honestly, I thought you were going to tell me you were pregnant or something.”

I laughed dismissively. “That’d be nice, but no.” And he went back out to the kotatsu.

I sat back down in my chair, shaken. It took a moment for me to realize why I was bothered…but as I realized it, I felt tears forming.

He doesn’t think it’s impossible.

I always thought he did. The strength of his supposed conviction helped me to accept the impossibility.

I should have known. My husband is not a man of absolutes. His opinion is not that it’s impossible, but that it’s not likely at all.

It would be more comforting to know it’s impossible. It would make it easier to move on, in any case.

And I’m pretty sure it is.

He just surprised me.

That’s all.

This is just horrifying.

Dan L’Allier said he witnessed 45 tons of the New York loot being unloaded in Minnesota at his company’s headquarters. He and Christopherson complained to a company executive, but were ordered to keep quiet. They persisted, going instead to the FBI.

The two whistleblowers eventually lost their jobs, received death threats and were blackballed in the disaster relief industry. But they remained convinced their sacrifice was worth seeing justice done.

They were wrong.

Once-secret documents obtained by The Associated Press detail how the company, Kieger Enterprises of Lino Lakes, Minn., went unpunished for the Sept. 11 thefts after the government discovered FBI agents and other government officials had stolen artifacts from New York’s ground zero.

As a result, most Americans were kept in the dark about a major fraud involving their donated goods even as new requests for charity emerged with disasters like Hurricane Katrina. And Christopherson and L’Allier were left disillusioned.

“I wouldn’t open my mouth again for all the tea in China,” L’Allier said. Added Christopherson, a 34-year-old father of two: “I paid a big price.”

[…]

The lead investigators for the FBI and the Federal Emergency Management Agency told AP that the plan to prosecute KEI for those thefts stopped as soon as it became clear in late summer 2002 that an FBI agent in Minnesota had stolen a crystal globe from ground zero.

That prompted a broader review that ultimately found 16 government employees, including a top FBI executive and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, had such artifacts from New York or the Pentagon.

“How could you secure an indictment?” FEMA investigator Kirk Beauchamp asked. “It would be a conflict.”

[…]

Prosecutors “and the FBI were very conscious of the fact that if they proceeded in one direction, they would have to proceed in the other, which meant prosecuting FBI agents,” said Jane Turner, the lead FBI agent. She too became a whistleblower alleging the bureau tried to fire her for bringing the stolen artifacts to light. Turner retired in 2003.

I don’t think the following is a very good argument, though:

Nick Gess, another former federal prosecutor, said the agents’ actions shouldn’t have precluded prosecuting the company.

“DEA agents have been found to smoke pot occasionally,” Gess said. “That doesn’t mean they (the Drug Enforcement Administration) can’t still work on drug cases.”

Yeeeeeaaaaah.

Lately it seems like I’ve seen a lot of people on blogs complaining that Kentucky is backwards and Southern. I’d like to ask them what they think about this:

Ashley, who died in April, began taking pictures in the early 1970s. He collaborated with Morgan on a project about drag queens, called Pagan Babes, that included The Water Nymphs.

Ashley took iconic shots of James Herndon, the drag queen known as Sweet Evening Breeze, and Lexington artist Henry Faulkner. At Red River Gorge and on North Elkhorn Creek, he posed nudes, men and women, among the rocks and trees. The scenes he created have an eerie, almost mythic quality.

[…]

A NOTED LEXINGTON PHOTOGRAPHER’S UNUSUAL ART GOES ON DISPLAY FOR THE FIRST TIME

When: Opens tonight [June 15]. 11 a.m.-10 p.m. daily except Sunday until July 3.

Where: Natasha’s Cafe, 112 Esplanade

Cost: Free

Call: (859) 621-7569

Tuesday’s late night has finally caught up with me :> I’m very bleary right now.

Tonight we’re going out to dinner with Mari, Brooke, and David, but right after that I think I’ll go to bed.

That’s right, no staying up later than I should to watch movies or anime. I don’t think anything particularly exciting is coming out today anyway.

Unrelated note: I now have the following photographs in nice frames on my desk at work: Sean leaning against a fence at Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia; Mari, Brooke, and me at Putt-Putt for my birthday party; Connor and Logan from last Christmas eating sausage balls; and Sean and me flanked by our parents under the zen O at our wedding. Really I just need pictures of AJ and Faye and Ben and Manda and my family menagerie will be complete.

From John Hewitt’s writing blog:

It occurred to me today that having a person use writing techniques to solve crimes would be a fun show. Of course, many shows have had “mystery writers” who also solve crimes, such as Murder She Wrote, but none of them actually use literary techniques to solve the crimes. The writer would identify moments of foreshadowing and plot points. They would also be sure to remind people when it is too soon to solve the crime. That can only be done in the last ten minutes.

Yes.

It’d be damn hard to write for that show, but the end result would be awesome.

OMG, hearing Haruhi say “Atashi no uta wo kike!”

I about died!

XD

And that was a cute episode preview anyway, because both of them said the next episode was number 12 :D

Wow, first a Touch reference (that music was perfect) and now Macross 7…this show is so fantabulous.

Mom gets prison for making child steal

A judge sentenced a woman to prison for making her 6-year-old daughter steal a volunteer fire company’s fundraising jar, a crime that netted the family $1.85.

That is one of the best introductory sentences I have ever read.

Had to cover the South Carolina Primary Election.

It was actually kind of fun. I’m waiting for the endorphins to wear off, at which point I will crawl into bed and die.

Sean got pizza, so I’ll eat some of that first, and start my download of Haruhi 11 (13) ;> (Looks like somebody plays go in this one?)

I’m sure I won’t be in this good of a mood tomorrow, when I have to get up and go to work at my usual time. Ah well.

“Well, in case you don’t go to the beach tomorrow–” Brooke said, but

“I’m going,” I interrupted her. “I’ll hate myself if I don’t!”

But I sabotaged myself and stayed up past one in the morning doing nothing in particular. I was chatting with Roderick and Shafa, which was cool, but otherwise all I was doing was reading Attack of the Bacon Robots and being annoyed by the printing errors. I could do that any old time.

Part of it was that I was starting to get nervous about going to the beach by myself. I asked Sean if he wanted to go, twice, and he said no. None of my friends ended up being available. As I lay in bed this morning trying to wake up (I had one of those mornings where I think I’m going to get up and then for some reason fall back asleep), I thought, “Who’ll watch my stuff while I’m swimming?” The answer, of course, was no one.

Later I was finally able to get up, and after a fit of coughing (stupid air conditioner always makes me congested) and my morning pills, I decided to check Google Maps to see how long it would take to get to a beach. I was assuming three hours to Tybee Island and two and a half to Myrtle Beach.

Google says it’ll take four hours to get to either.

That didn’t really mesh with my experience, so I checked Mapquest, which said four hours to Myrtle and three hours to Tybee. I thought it was faster to get to Myrtle Beach!

But either way, it was going to be more than six hours in the car, round trip, for not much sunlight at the beach.

So I’m sitting here at the computer instead of going.

If I’d gotten up early like I originally said I would, I might have gone. But I stayed up late. I don’t really know why.

You watch, I won’t have another chance to go to the beach for a long time, and I’ll feel like a moron for missing this opportunity.

Oh well.

Should I go through and enumerate them?

Well, I don’t really hate it. I just wish it could do all the things I want to do.

I hate designing print advertisements in Photoshop. It’s retarded.

I need to buy Creative Suite so I can have InDesign ;_;

Because all the world originated in Japan, and everything great in the world returns to Japan eventually.

;>

Times Online: Japan is proud home of Christ’s tomb

For two millennia the farming village of Shingo claims to have protected a tradition that Jesus spent most of his life in Japan. The village is the home of Sajiro Sawaguchi, a man in his eighties who claims to be a direct descendant of Jesus and whose family has always owned the land in which it is said that Christ is buried.

Mr Sawaguchi emerged as Jesus’s heir only in 1935, when a priest in Ibaraki discovered a document in ancient Japanese purporting to be Christ’s will. This document supposedly identifies Shingo as the location of the tombs of Jesus and Isukiri. The claim is widely believed. About 40,000 Japanese visit the site every year. Two years ago it was presented with a plaque by Jerusalem, and next Sunday [June 4] it will host the annual Christ festival of traditional Japanese dance.

According to the account in the Christ Museum next to the tombs, Christ arrived in Japan at the age of 21 and learnt Japanese before returning to Judaea 12 years later to engage in his mission and preach about the “holy land of Japan”. The official Shingo history is that Jesus’s place on the Cross was “casually” taken by his brother, leaving Christ free to return to Japan. On his return he fell in love with Miyuko, a local girl, and lived happily with his family among the rice fields until dying aged 106.

Here is some more information from Japan Today.

According to the local legend, Christ first came to Japan, aged 21, during the reign of the 11th emperor, Suinin, and landed at the port of Hashidate on the Japan Sea coast. Apparently, he settled in Etchu province where, under the tutelage of a great master, he studied Japanese language, literature and various other subjects. The Legend of Daitenku Taro Jurai (Daitenku Taro Jurai was the name Christ is said to have later taken) claims that at the end of his 11-year stay, Christ returned to Judea, aged 33, where he taught about the “sacred land” of Japan. But, unfortunately, “Christ’s teachings about Japan were considered too radical,” and he was condemned to death.

The New Testament teaches Jesus was crucified at Golgotha, rose from the dead after three days and later ascended into Heaven. However, according to the legend of Herai, Jesus escaped this fate, and instead his brother Isukiri was nailed to the cross and died. Christ, meanwhile, fled with his disciples and went into hiding, carrying locks of the Virgin Mary’s hair and his brother’s ear. After an arduous journey across Siberia, Christ finally returned to Japan and settled in Herai where he changed his name, married a Japanese woman called Miyuko, fathered three daughters and lived to the age of 106.

[…]

For the people of Herai too, the revelation that Christ is buried in their village came as a shock when documents claiming Jesus had resided in Japan were discovered in Ibaraki Prefecture in 1935. Said to be Christ’s will and testament and the proof that he had lived and died in Japan, the “Takenouchi documents” later proved to be fake. For years, many villagers felt that the shroud of mystery surrounding the large ancient tombs in a bamboo thicket had finally been lifted. The documents explained some of the village’s customs, such as marking a cross on the forehead of a child when it first leaves the home and why Sanjiro Sawaguchi, a village elder, had “blue eyes like a foreigner.”

This story seems to be rather old.

Wikipedia: Shingo, Aomori

The City of Shingo’s homepage (as of right now, you can see the Kirisuto Matsuri listed in the Event Calendar).

Sounds like this would be a fun vacation stop. Since it’s in northern Honshu, maybe Sean and I can hit it when I force him to go to Hakodate (Hokkaido). (He hates the cold, but I demand that he eat the best sushi in the world.)

With this fabulous weather we’ve been having, I’m dying to spend a few hours at the ocean :)

Have you seen Yakitate!! Japan 67?!

When I first saw that old man, I thought, “Hey, it’s Gollum.”

And he is.

XD XD XD XD

I laughed so hard, at this whole episode. I love how the fourth wall just goes completely out the window now.

So apparently I look like Shirley Temple.

(Or at least I did 6 years ago. This is the picture I used. Yes, I’m a big cheater.)

I also look(ed) like Cameron Diaz, Heather Graham, Renee Zellweger, Monica Bellucci, Helen Hunt, Kirstie Alley, and Sharon Tate.

Sean looks like Heath Ledger, Ashton Kutcher, Justin Timberlake, Ralph Nader, “Tarkan” (?!), and Hayden Christensen.

Isn’t that nice?

(Via Shafa.)

(Oh, and if you’re wondering why I’m posting on my blog during work hours, I’m on lunchbreak at home bringing the car to Sean so he can drive me back to work and go to work himself. It’s so much fun having my car in the shop.)