Seriously?

Jesse Helms gets himself added to the list of people who died on the 4th of July?

Well, R.I.P. and all that, Mr. Helms.

Interesting spin on gas costs

I saw this on cnn.com this morning and thought it made some good points. Read all the way through if you have the time. Most of us are very focused on the here and now of gas prices eating a hole in our wallets, but there are some potential long-term benefits. Beyond the rather obvious ones such as less traffic and fewer accidents, one that stood out to me is the very first one--bringing jobs back to the U.S.

Still here!

I haven't disappeared (nor am I still angry, you'll be glad to know), but it's been busy! Real post to come soon!

Anger

Just when every outlet for my anger has been exhausted to the point of irritation, I remembered that I have a blog! I'm angry at someone that is ultimately so peripheral to my existence, that I'm even angrier that the person can make me so furious. Teeth-clenchingly, word-sputtering, drinking-inducing anger.

To this person:
Stay out of my way. Stay out of the job we are trying to do. What is it, "let he without sin cast the first stone?" Right, remember that. Also, the pot calling the kettle black, sticks and stones, or any of those other cliches that become appropriate at times. Even thought we all know your tactics are just that--tactics--it is unbelievably irritating that we even have to take the time to deal with it. There are so many more things I could be doing right now, activities and tasks that are actually uplifting in the motion and emotion of them. Things that will ultimately have considerably more long-term impact on the lives of others than your ramblings. So get over it, and get out.

Okay, I'm done. I may not be over it, but at least writing helps. More interesting posts in the days to come, I hope.

Update:

My Google Reader now contains a beautiful 0 unread posts. Whoo hoo!!!

Out of control

That title adequately sums up both my current work life and the state of my Google Reader. Seriously, you know work is busy when I don't have time to read obsessively about other people's lives, and let me tell you--as of this morning, there are 316 unread blog posts. AND I'VE ACTUALLY BEEN KEEPING UP WITH SOME OF THEM. Perhaps it's time to let some go? But...but...no! I might MISS something! I'm so behind that, as you see, I'm actually posting rather than tackling the problem.

Here's a time-killer that I actually gleaned from one of those 300+ posts (from mentalfloss.com). It's fun to mock the stupidity of others, no?

Books!

Took this from Jessica, who took it from Angry Pregnant Lawyer. These are the top 106 books tagged "unread" at LibraryThing . Bold the ones you’ve read, change the font to red for the ones you read for school. And I'll add Jessica's marking that italics mean that I didn't finish it. Tag to anyone who reads this.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Crime and Punishment
Wuthering Heights
Catch-22
The Silmarillion
Don Quixote
The Odyssey
The Brothers Karamazov
Ulysses
War and Peace
Madame Bovary
A Tale of Two Cities
Jane Eyre
The Name of the Rose
Moby Dick
Emma
The Iliad
Vanity Fair
Love in the Time of Cholera
The Blind Assassin
Pride and Prejudice
The Historian: A Novel
The Canterbury Tales
The Kite Runner
Great Expectations
Life of Pi
The Time Traveler's Wife
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Atlas Shrugged
Foucault's Pendulum
Dracula
The Grapes of Wrath
Frankenstein
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Mrs. Dalloway
Sense and Sensibility
Middlemarch
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
The Count of Monte Cristo
The Sound and the Fury
Memoirs of a Geisha
Brave New World
Quicksilver
American Gods
Middlesex
The Poisonwood Bible (LOVE love love this book. I think I've read it 3 times or so)
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Dune
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
The Satanic Verses
Mansfield Park
Gulliver's Travels
The Three Musketeers
The Inferno
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Fountainhead
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
To the Lighthouse
A Clockwork Orange
Robinson Crusoe
Persuasion
The Scarlet Letter
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
The Once and Future King
Anansi Boys
Atonement
The God of Small Things
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Cryptonomicon
Dubliners
Oryx and Crake
Angela's Ashes
Beloved
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
In Cold Blood
Lady Chatterley's Lover
A Confederacy of Dunces
Les Miserables
The Amber Spyglass
The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
Watership Down
Beowulf: A New Verse Translation
The Aeneid
A Farewell to Arms
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
Sons and Lovers
Possession
The Book Thief
The history of Tom Jones
The Road
Tender is the Night
The War of the Worlds