okay, okay... women are right...

getting your hair cut IS complicated!

so. i need a haircut this weekend. a buddy was asking me if i would have time to go shoot this weekend, and i said i didn't know and was listing out the things i need to accomplish. unfortunately it's a halfway long list for a weekend and if i don't get a couple big things done i'll feel like a slacker. which i am. but i'll really feel like one.

one of the items was "get my haircut". he got excited. "ooh, this'll work out. we'll go to my place and then we'll go shooting afterwards" and started laughing way more than he needed to at the idea of getting our hair cut. we've talked about "his place" before and it freaks me out. he goes to a topless barber shop. now, i'm not against oogling breasts. that's not what freaks me out. what freaks me out is the last two times i've gotten my hair cut at MY place, the barbers (both women, but not topless) have gotten splinters from my hair. i had no idea such a thing was possible, and then to have two of them, in a row, have it happen to them is just weird. i asked both of them about it, and they both said it usually happens a couple times a week. and it happened in the same place to both of them. they were reaching over my head with one arm and just brushed their inner arm against my head and *blam* splinter. so. i start thinking about topless females and accidental brush and a splinter in a really inconvenient, sensitive spot and cringe. so that place is out.

and my normal place? i went their two weeks ago in uniform. i'd just gotten done counseling my new soldiers and one of the bullets i cover in the initial counseling is professional appearance. then i caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and saw that i was looking a little shaggy and couldn't be a hypocrite. so i stopped on the way home to get a haircut so i wouldn't embarrass myself the next day standing in front of them in formation. the female barber who opened up first called my name and i went back, sat in the chair and we started small-talking as she was doing her prep work. turns out we're both part thai and so we just kept talking from there. nice, normal trivial hair-cut chit-chat. obviously she was high-energy and was one of those ones who can't just let you trance-out, but has to keep talking or they get uncomfortable.

anyways, she's just talking and all of a sudden the words "i really want to sleep with an army guy" come out of her mouth. and are followed by lots of other words. which didn't ease my comfort level. especially with tons of people, to include kids around. i mean, it's one thing in the parking lot of a bar at last call, or whispered in your ear... at an appropriate moment. but blurted out, repeatedly by your barber throws you for a loop.

i'm getting shaggy again, so tomorrow's haircut day. we'll see how it goes.

i think this video came out the summer i was 17. back when mtv actually had music. i had such a crush on the girl and thought it was a great song at the time. i could be in the other end of the house and hear this video come on and i'd almost break my neck trying to plant my ass on the couch to watch it. fortunately all the guys i hung out with felt the same way, so if we were all hanging out together everyone shut up at once and we didn't have to beat anyone down.

different times way back when. i watch this now and feel relatively guilty because she looks so young. as i understand it, billy was still recovering from his motorcycle accident and that's why all the shots are of him from the waist up and he's got such a limited role in this video.

too bad his new music sucks so bad.

i deleted a comment by accident on a post or two back. sorry!

couple things...

okay. first, i've gotta say you guys are absolutely awesome. thanks so much all of you. i really appreciate all the offers of tastykakes and ikea runs and everything else as a response to my earlier post. and i apologize, i didn't mean to sound like i was asking you guys for stuff, no guilt trips, honest. keep reading, i'm not gonna ask for collections for a new ipod (or tissot seastar), i promise.

i'm gonna tell my mom and my dad. and i'll probably tell them before i go. i just don't see the point of telling them now, or several months ago and causing my mom to worry for several months. she can't change anything, but she'll worry anyways. so i'll give her a couple more months of blissful ignorance.

so. funny story. my dad joined the navy way back when. he'd failed out of the seminary, sucked at selling insurance and his brothers had gone through the navy and done well for themselves afterwards. so he thought he'd give it a shot. at the time, if you wanted to the G.I. Bill you had to serve in a combat zone, so he volunteered for service in Vietnam. did he tell his folks? oh hells no. how'd they find out? he broke his glasses. he needed to get a radio patch to the local radio station and have them tap into the local phone system so he could get his mom to get his prescription and send it over. not as happy as they could be. especially when the next time they saw him he had a wife and two kids... short story long, he fell in love with that part of the country and didn't want to come home.

timing is everything...

a couple years ago i was crosstraining with another unit in denver. they were moving within a building and needed a hand from a commo guy/computer geek. they had a pretty good guy on staff, but it was just alot of work for one guy. i met the kid, he was pretty sharp, we worked well together the first morning. as we were bullshitting while working, we realized we lived in the same apartment complex on the complete other side of town. we were both from iowa, both had the same military specialty and both did the same thing in the civilian world. he's a fair bit younger than me but we've hung out over the years and become pretty good buddies.

i was trying to talk him into going to afghanistan with me, but he wouldn't. he was just coming off of an active duty tour, and was starting a new job and didn't want to screw with it by leaving for a tour. he's working for a government contractor and an opportunity came up for him to go to iraq with them for a helluva lot more money than i'll be making. he's excited about it. he's young, single, and has trained for deployments. he'll really set himself up for success with the company he's working for. just a win-win situation.

a couple weeks ago we were going out to dinner. the girl he was kinda seeing was with us and we were talking about his trip. she's from a very religious, very close-knit family. she's graduated from college, working a very "grown-up", "career" job. making a decent wage for someone so young and living at home with her family, just because they're that close. so she's having ALOT of problems understanding him. he's got no plans to go home first to see his family before going home. hasn't told them that he's going yet. while we were going through some of his stuff, he made a smart assed comment about how he was having a harder time throwing out old combat boots than he did throwing out christmas cards and letters from the family. she was hoping i'd help her gang up on him and get him to talk to his family.

i couldn't do it. not all of my family knows yet. i personally am too weak to deal with lectures from my dad. he's such a hero to me that it tears me up when he tells me what a mistake i'm making. especially since he's a vietnam vet. he's been in similar situations, and knows that they're not always by choice. so i'm just avoiding that all together. one of my biggest fears in that respect is that i won't be able to swallow it, and i'll say things i'll regret. and then something will happen to me over there and that's the last thing he'll remember. hearing the same lecture 3 times in a row doesn't not make it any better.

bigger than that though is my mom. next month will be 2 years now since my sister passed away. she worried so badly last time. if there was anyway to go the whole trip without telling her about it, it'd be just fine by me. or at least make it through the holidays. but unfortunately i don't think that's gonna happen. i'd like to spare her a couple of months of worrying if possible though. not quite sure of the right time to break that one to her though. blah.

stockpiling...

so i've been on this waffle cone blizzard kick lately. are they REALLY that good? pretty close. are the dq girls really that cute? not so much, they just make me feel old. so why do i go there so much?

i got a speeding ticket on the motorcycle the other day. over 25 miles over the speed limit. and even though i've gotten one, i can't turn the speed freak off. if i'm having a john wayne day where i'm really feeling good on the bike i just keep twisting and twisting the throttle...

i'm eating out. alot lately. but no subway, pizza hut, taco bell or burger king. lots of junk food and nice restaurants. i'm sitting on the couch watching tons of t.v., drinking more beer than i normally do, cranking the stereo whenever possible... in all of 2007 i've been shooting for fun twice. all in the last week. and i'm going again on sunday.

i'm not running anywhere near as much as i should. bare minimum to pass my p.t. test and be able to beat/keep up with my kids. nothing to improve my times or prepare for my leg of this year's marathon.

you've probably figured out what i'm doing already. because you're smarter than me. someone actually had to point it out to me. i'm stockpiling experiences before i deploy. i suppose if morals didn't get in the way i'd be having one night stands or hiring hookers left and right. all the things that i'm going to miss while i'm overseas i'm catching up on right now. as much as a person can. i've already started to think about who i can tap for tastykakes, ikea pillows and clean bedsheets. i've really been pulling myself away from friends alot lately. been trying to enjoy some solitude before i'm constantly surrounded by people. which i need to be careful about, because i don't want to lose friends, and when i'm over there i'll miss them as much as i'll miss alone time.

anyways. don't call me sunday afternoon. i'll be busy stockpiling naps or shooting. :)

i'm okay with going back

the weekend...

the weekend was pretty good. slept late saturday. made plans to go shooting and then got a call from one of the guys in my group. "hey, what're you doing?" "getting ready to go shooting, you?" "i'm down here at the harley shop, why aren't you here?" "uhm. because i don't need a new motorcycle and mine is running fine?" "no jackass, the fund raiser. why aren't you down here?"

military units have what they call an "frg" or "family readiness group". the spouses/families form a support group for one another. in theory a good thing, in practice? usually a disaster that occassionaly gets lucky and does some good. anyways, they run some fundraisers to raise money to have events and to help families in need during deployments. they buy gifts for the kids at Christmas, etc...

each year the big harley shop near me (where i bought my scoot from) has a big event and they let our frg set up a booth and sell t-shirts and snacks. usually it's the biggest money maker of the year. only this year the unit forgot to tell anyone when it was. apparently a couple kids were hanging around on friday so they got snagged to help out. so i threw on my uniform and climbed on the bike and got down there. always fun looking at skanky biker chicks for an hour or two. and the non-skanky ones. seriously though, it's good to get out there and meet people and clear up misconceptions about the military. let them see we're not all a bunch of brain-washed idiots who aren't capable of making informed decisions of our own.

i was still able to get out with my buddy and go shooting. that was a heck of alot of fun. quiet range, we were the only people shooting. the army takes all of the fun out of shooting for qualification purposes. it's fun just to put rounds downrange and get comfortable with the weapons all over again. he's a pretty good shot and taught me a couple cool tricks. i'd like to think i returned the favor.

sunday was just spent doing errands around the house, then screwing around. a friend and his gf came over for burgers and brauts. we went pistol shopping. then fried cd's in an old microwave to watch the spark show.

kinda nice to have a really, really low-key, low-stress weekend for once.

i'm shot for the rest of the day...

i've eaten too much. today was another cookout day at work.

here's my little grill station where i worked my magic.

and i have NO idea what the goofy look on my face was for here... someone brought in some delicious brownies and some excellent carrot cake. i'm pretty much useless until tomorrow folks!

don't be a selfish ass...

...for lack of a better title

so. as the new deployment gets closer alot of negativity comes out from people who i'd like to consider as members of my support group. they don't mean it as such. but it's there and it's a pain in the ass to deal with. and it's not just me, we're all going through it. one of my kids is in big trouble because he just stopped showing up for training. his family was guilting him like crazy. saying that his grandmother (who raised him) was on her deathbead and his deployment would push her over the edge, and then preventing him from seeing her. his girlfriend is threatening to break up with him or cheat on him if he leaves because she "loves him so much and doesn't know how to cope without him". when he finally got a chance to see his grandmother in person she was fairly supportive. not happy, but supportive.

with me it's alot of "why do you have to go again?", "so are you surprised that your boss is being an ass to you when you're leaving all the time?", "do you realize that you're shirking responsibilities?", "do you enjoy stressing your mother out this much?", "your civilian job is just as meaningful as your army job" and what tons of others.

i'm a good soldier. someone was trying to make fun of me the other day at training, saying that i'd make a great mom because i worry about all the little details. i considered it a compliment. as an nco, that's my job. i'm supposed to take care of my soldiers, everything from making sure that they're bathing regularly and practicing good personal hygiene to worrying about their technical and tactical abilities. there are some guys who are better at different aspects of soldiering than me, but i'm a pretty damned good total package.

soldiering might just be what i do best. there's probably other things that i'm good at but nothing that i do as well overall. and there isn't much that gives me that kind of feeling of satisfaction. of course with the good comes lots of bad. and the potential for alot more. if something bad happens to one of these young guys that i'm responsible for...

if i had the temperament to be a teacher or the brains and discipline to be a doctor those are careers i'd shoot for. i spent alot of time agonizing over the decision of whether or not to enter the seminary a decade ago. toured several, spent tons of times in retreats praying for guidance. i've done research about careers in law enforcement and even applied to a place or two. but at the end of the day soldiering is my niche. of course, because life is never easy it comes with alot of bureaucracy that i can't handle full time, so i have to do it as a reservist and take a little break from it from time to time, but it's not just a job. it's a lifestyle choice. it's part of me. part of the definition of me. not the entirety, but definately an important piece.

so it irks me that people ask me to deny that. that they don't get that and think it's something to just turn off. maybe i could flip that switch in time of peace, but now? send kids out the door and not be willing to go myself? granted, i'm getting tired. and this trip is going to be my last for awhile, but i'll still be training and poking and prodding... and it really irks me when people try to compare my civilian job to that. my civilian job is all about making sure that people use technology to streamline their processes. thus helping the company to save money. thus making the owner of the company richer. that's it. it's about making money. manufacturing a product that if we didn't make, someone else would. and not even making a helluva lot of money for myself. and everytime i've left before? it's survived without me.

then there's the whole "legal obligation". "why can't you just stop doing that stuff? tell them it's interfering with work?" because i'm legally obligated. sure, i volunteered to be legally obligated, but i'm legally obligated all the same. a piece of paper shows up on my desk ordering me to report for duty means i have to report for duty. if i don't show up action can be taken against me. and were i not legally obligated, i'd still be morally obligated. i took an oath. and i've gotten some good stuff out of the army. and the army had upheld it's end of the bargin. my last bonus which helped me buy my house and get out from under bad debt, training, my college degree, life experiences, great friendships, self-confidence and so much more. my turn to uphold my end.

this video is another of those "sad songs" we were talking about a couple posts ago. i enjoy big and rich, mostly for their more upbeat songs that i like roadtripping to. but this is a great song, and a great video. and it's what it's all about. the guys to your left and your right. the same guys who i just got back from iraq with are turning around and going on this new trip. with a couple additions. that alone is a good enough reason for me. would you let your son or brother or father or spouse go alone if you had an opportunity to go with them? think our relationships are any less strong?

i know all these people mean well. and i appreciate the sentiment. but in reality they're just making it so much harder. and i'm sure i'll have negativity myself about the trip. and i'll vent it. the "deployment" as a whole encompasses a helluva of time, people and experiences. and some of them are going to be bad. and as much as i want to go, there are parts of me that don't. i'm human. which makes me complicated.

it doesn't get much better...

... than a cold beer in a hot shower after a good day's work.

introducing...

J-B Weld! Almost as good as duct tape!

recommendations...

BigWhiteHat has a post about the saddest song he's heard on his blog.

for me it's always been "fire and rain" by james taylor.



when i was a kid, moving around all the time it related to all the friends i lost touch with over the years. which is recommendation #1 for the day. if you've got netflix or one of those services and you haven't seen it yet, you need to stick "running on empty" with river phoenix in your queue. as a kid that was just a movie i could relate to so much. (no, my parents weren't wanted by the fbi).

as i've gotten older that song still means all the people i've lost touch with, which is really more tragic now than it was then, because now it's because i'm a lazy ass or something has happened where we're just not as important to one another. 25 years ago it was a little harder to communicate with kids once we moved from someplace. in today's day of cheap long distance, instant messaging and email if i lose touch with someone... but the song also means everyone i've lost over the years, that i'll never be able to say the things i should've said to. at least not in this life.

second recommendation? "chiefs" by stuart woods. and if you can find it on videotape, the miniseries. it's one of the few books that i've liked as a movie better, but just barely. he does ALOT of character development and backstory in the novel so in some ways the pacing of the mini series is just a little better. if you enjoy reading fiction and want a good end-of-summer read, it's a great one.

randoms

another old video for courtney

-so. how do some ideas get past so many people when they're clearly bad? when i was at fort bragg i used to eat at fazoli's fairly regularly. single guys in the barracks didn't have kitchens, the dining facility closed at 6:00pm and it was just cheap and easy. especially when i was doing alot of racing and it seemed like a decent way to carb load. i don't eat there so often now and walked in the other night and was surpised to see that they were charging $0.25 for "endless breadsticks". walking past all the seats to my table and seeing how few of them had the indicator on the table to designate that the patron had purchased the breadsticks was humorous. it's hard to believe they couldn't bury a charge into the meals to cover the price of breasticks and continue to appear as a service oriented, friendly establishment instead of appearing as a greedy company out to nickle and dime you to death. before that actually became policy and the signs and all were printed don't you think someone would've had to say "hey, is this REALLY the image we want to portray?"

-the watch that i love? one of the pins popped out of the band. i couldn't stand the thought of sending it away for weeks so i tried to j-b weld it. so far so good. not sure that j-b weld is the recommended way to repair a fine swiss timepiece, but oh-well. it's kinda funny, my dad grew up during some really rough times. like bread and butter sandwiches and glad to have them rough times and so treats all of his possessions carefully. so carefully that he rinses his car with purified water so that it doesn't get mineral spots on it when he washes it. he also fixes pocket watches and clocks. i was asking him if he had pins in his desk that would fit it and while he was looking i mentioned that i was expecting a lecture from him for beating up my nice watch. he said hell no. i bought it, i should wear it, that's what watches are for. sometimes he confuses the hell out of me.

-i'm still hella pissed about this lack of training. it's a leadership thing. how dare you send troops into a dangerous situation without proper training. i fully agree with rumsfeld's quote of "you go to war with the army you have, not the army you want". if i was told to get my troops ready to get on a plane to go into a combat zone in 18hrs or less, i'd say "yes sir" and drive on with my mission. but we had training set up for other soldiers. we had the time, the equipment. it was a lack of planning that prevented us from having enough people on the ground to train everyone who is deploying. so now i'm going to have to take a lot of personal time and money to buy ammunition and call in favors to borrow weapons and get civilian range time to train my guys and get their comfort level up. and it's not out of the goodness of my heart. sure, it's the right thing to do. but it's also entirely selfish. my safety may soon depend on these young guys and i want to make sure they're up to snuff. i'm not 100% sure about the rules of ranting against the military in a public forum, but i have to say i'm very disappointed that we're an army that's been at war for 7 years now and we're still making the training mistakes we're making. the whole focus of the army is wrong. we're worried about a new dress uniform. some peoples' priorities are a little messed up.

-it's nice to be stationary for a couple days. my poor yard's a mess and the small mountain of laundry facing me is intimidating. so's the amount of paperwork i have to do to get reimbursed for all of travel lately.

-if you were going to get a graduate degree today and it was going to be for the purpose of forwarding your career (although if you're one of the lucky bastards who found a field that coincides with all that they love and so the graduate degree would both forward their career AND be something that they're amazingly interested in and WANT to learn...) what would it be in and why?

-i finally completed all coursework for my undergrad. now i'm just waiting for the jackasses to finish grading the final for the last class. i swear they drag the process out as long as possible on purpose. but i'm putting in my promotion packet for the next step and will be able to include the degree. took me long enough.

-i'm a geek, but i'm in love with this pen.

-i'd love it if people would take the self-porn photos off their computers before they gave them to me to fix. just saying. well. okay. if hot girls ever give me their computers to fix they can leave it on. yes. i am a pig. oink-oink.

a new one

the song i can't get out of my head this week. i have NO idea what the video means, but...

so i'm back. but i'm leaving in a couple hours.

the weekend was good. great training. for everyone but me and my guys. so yes, there's a little bitterness about that, and we'll discuss that in a minute. got home safe'n'sound on tuesday without wrecking another car. maybe the jinx is lifted. came close once, but...



i've got several things i want to write about in the future:

-an absolutely wonderful someone who called "country" and "southern rock" the same thing.

-my earlier post about reasons not to date someone and people who are single past 35 or so.

-people who haven't learned the "don't judge someone unless you've walked a mile in their shoes" lesson in reference to non-catholics who bash the church, non vets who bash the military, etc...

-songs that stick in our heads from our "musically formative" years.

-those snapshots in time that remind you how far you've come and how old you've gotten


so. there are many ways to group people in the army. one method that the army likes is splitting them into two groups know as "combat/combat arms" and "combat support". the logic used to be you were either a trigger puller or else you supported the trigger pullers. commo guys like me, mechanics, medics, cooks, intel, supply guys and many others would all be known as combat support. great in theory. the reality of it though? as a commo guy i trained just as hard as the combat engineers i supported. learned to use alot of the same weapons and explosives that they did and could've been sent into combat with them. the bad guy wouldn't see my little antenna sticking up and say "wait, he's combat support, shoot the other guys first!", they'd see my antenna and say "oooh, shoot him first, cut them off from everyone else so they can't call for help". so it'd be in my best interest to shoot back and be just as effective as the combat engineers or the infantry guys i'm supporting. same goes for all the other support guys. and now, in iraq where it's more guerilla warfare instead of battle lines support guys are just as much at risk as anyone else. and guys who work in jobs that aren't as needed in this war as others are being retrained to perform infantry tasks. the lines are definately getting blurred and the army realized it and created the "combat action badge" to be awarded to non-infantry guys who are engaged in combat and perform well.

apparently no one has told my high headquarters about any of this though. we went out to cali to perform "battle focused training" for the "deploying soldiers". we've been doing this training here on our own for months, and have been doing it very effectively, but our battalion wanted us to come to california and go through it there as well. we were under the impression that they were going to be training us and were looking forward to going through the training lanes. when we got there we were told that we were still going to be training ourselves, that they were just there to "coordinate" and "observe" and "validate" our training. they wanted the headquarters section (me and my guys) to train the rest of the crew instead of going through the training with them. why? because they were "more at risk".

we were doing convoy skills training. in iraq the headquarters section put 2 as many miles on the vehicles as most of the teams. we were on the roads more and in many ways at much more risk than the teams. the teams usually operated in the same areas with close support whereas we supported ourselves and were frequently way out in hostile territory. some team guys were in much worse situations than i was. some weren't. and we have no idea what's going to happen this time around. but my guys are just as much at risk, and just as much in need of the training as the others.

we sucked it up and supported the others. it was still good for my new guys. they got to see alot of mistakes being made and hopefully learned from them. i did some good training, because while everyone else was focused on grading the guys on some of their psychological operations task i was watching what they were doing from a tactical standpoint and caught alot of (and corrected alot of) mistakes they were making tactically. i also got to put my guys in "leadership" roles and send them off on their own to make mistakes. so i got to develop some level of trust in their ability to act correctly in my absence. basically i'm going to end up having to carve out time and train us up on our own. which sucks. but to be honest we'll probably be tighter-knit for our troubles.

i'm out...

off to california so they can kick our asses for four days. military training. according to the training schedule there are a couple of nights with less than 4 hours allotted to sleep. and sometime in that 4 hrs there are leaders' meetings, weapons cleaning, personal hygiene, and whatever else has to get done to be ready for the next day's training. then i go to phoenix to pick up a replacement car. should be back here monday or tuesday.

behave!

so here's a question...

i was watching "friends" the other night and it was the episode where chandler starts dating the girl, finds out she's got an artifical leg and is freaked out about it, gets over it and is ready to date her and then she finds out that he has a triple nipple and leaves him.

we've all seen the movies... girl meets guy, girl falls for guy incredibly quickly, guy confesses he's dying from some disease, girl stays with guy anyway and has the most amazing couple of weeks/months/whatever that makes it all worth while. or something else along those lines. love conquers all. a few minutes of love is worth a lifetime of pain. so on and so forth.

so in real life what makes someone an insensitive, selfish jerk? we're getting ready to go out the door again. there's a young guy i know who went on a couple dates with a girl, then life interupted. they kinda run in the same circles and he's found out from others that she's still a virgin. they've talked about it some and about going out on more dates and she's definately dropped the hints that she's more than interested. he, on the other hand, doesn't want to get into a serious relationship when he's months away from going out the door and will quite honestly tell you that while he doesn't have any immediate prospects wouldn't mind sex for the sake of sex before he leaves. but being the good guy that he is, he feels totally guilty. if they'd steadily gone out on dates and he liked her and it came up that she was still a virgin, he'd be okay with that and might've waited for her. but knowing what he knows now, and being where he is he really doesn't want to date her.

i've know a guy who refuses to date a girl if she's not taking anti depressants. says he can't deal with "typical female mood swings". there's a girl who has broken up with a guy when she found out he was bi-polar. one guy refuses to date anyone else who suffers from migraines. said he did that for years and it just drastically changed his life. he'd spend a week or more every month tending to his girlfriend and just doesn't want to go through that again. even though he knows that not everyone's migraines are that frequent or long lasting, he's just made the rule and so far is sticking to it. says he feels like he's regained all this lost freedom since they broke up. doesn't have to tiptoe around his own house, or live in the dark because the bright light hurt her head more. does that make him a jerk? or does he just want what he wants? and is that okay?

it's one thing when you've committed to being with someone through thick and thin and you're years into that relationship and life happens. yeah. you might be an ass for bailing on someone when life kicks them in the nuts. your husband of 20 years has a heart attack? might not be the best time to tell him you're leaving him. but you're in the first couple weeks and someone tells you they've been diagnosed with cancer and have a short life expectancy and you can't deal? are you shallow for leaving? or just honest? you feel their nubbin and it grosses you out? that okay? someone confesses to being a recovering drug/alcohol addict and you know for a fact that that's not a battle you want to help them fight...

are there any times you've passed on a relationship for something and you felt bad about it? would you look down your nose on someone for breaking up with someone for any of these reasons? look down on a friend for doing any of these things?

came across this quote today...

and i liked it. robert duvall has always been one of my favorite actors, so it's always nice when you read something like this and realize that they really do embody some of the traits that they portray, like common sense.

"One guy asked me, 'How can you be an actor and be a Republican?'. I can vote either way. But how can you boil it down to political affiliation? All the atrocities against blacks in the South were committed by Democratic sheriffs."

and as a freebie:


"They should keep their mouths shut." - on Hollywood political activists

lovely...

my blackberry pearl just fell into the commode.