My mother was visiting DeKalb recently as we were accosted by a person on the street with a microphone attached to a minidisc player. The interviewer claimed to be with NPR and wanted to know our thoughts on Alan Keyes decision to run for Illinois Senate.

As clear as it was the girl was not from or vaguely affiliated with NPR, it got me thinking of the new Republican candidate from Maryland.

Here we go:

Alan Keyes ran for president in 2000, got nary a percent of the nations vote. Also was one of the biggest objectors to Hillary Clinton's move to New York to become a senator there, calling her the nation's biggest carpetbagger. So sorry Allen, you are. Not to mention the nation's biggest hypocrite.

The election is sealed for Illinois Senate. And I'll have you know one thing, if Barack was in the U.S. senate in 2000, he would have damn well signed the contest of election of George W. Bush. Something no member of the Senate did.

Heed my word folks, the next four years are going to be much much better than the past four.

I'm rockin the sans-serif now for all my posts, it makes it much easier to read. And for all you latin lovers out there sans-serif means without feet.

My bro is going to war, his unit just got "activated" and come thursday they are going to the gulf. Not much harm for a naval unit though, seeing as we are fighting infants as far as war technology goes. Unless they uncover some of those phantom weapons of mass destruction.

Here's an interesting double standard. Check out the difference between the recruting navy.com versus the official Navy.mil

It's similar to movie rides.
You know how when you're about to go on one of those crappy seat shaking three dee movie rides, and before you get into your seat generally you need to watch a preliminary movie to set up the ride's storyline.
It's always real bad ass and get's you real psyched, then when it's done, the lights come up and you remember just where you are, and some snot nosed teenager with an inidentifiable accent proceeds to command you where to go. Then it's always just down hill from there.

Very similar to those two sites, one's all the sizzle and the other is the true deal.

I don't know...I seem to have lost all momentum on that thought.

By: Chaz Wilke
Weekender Reporter

"Everybody wants a slinky. Slinky. Slinky. Go Slinky Go!"

The Original Slinky Walking Spring Toy. A toy that not only walks, bounces, springs, juggles, flips and jiggles, but also does the most death defying end over end somersaults down a staircase this side of Evil Knievel. All this for less than two bucks? Yes, and what fun are we going to have with this wonderful invention, a toy with no less than six adjective slapped right there on the box.

I get it home and open it immediately, so excited I almost overlook exactly what came out of the box and start envisioning the joy that will soon follow. But, there it sat on my desk, a slinky, what looked like a spring that had put in too many hours on the job, it didn't want to move, it sat there all coiled up like a really long lazy metallic snake.

I picked it up and started the standard shift from one hand to the next seeing exactly which of these six adjectives on the side of the box it would actually live up to.

Walk: If they meant stumble like a sixty year old homeless wino? then yes. it walked perfectly.

Bounce: Not in this life, maybe before it became the docile spring I saw before me.

Spring: Refer to the title to debunk this adjective, it doesn't spring it slinks.

Juggle: Since juggling is the act of managing more items than one has hands, it'd be impossible to juggle one slinky, and it's not recommend juggling more than one, because they would quickly become intertwined, and if one lesson was learned from a corded phone, it was those coils are nearly impossible to get pulled apart.

Flip: This will be discussed a little later.

Jiggle: The one adjective that the slinky can really live up to, it jiggled with the best of them, but jiggling too hard would get it all stuck together, causing the same problem as with juggling.

Upset at the fact my new toy was generally worthless, there was one test that needed to be administered--The Infamous Stair Walk.

The first staircase was a bust; the original reasoning was that it was carpeted. So the slinky went for a field trip around NIU, testing most every staircase on campus. Not a single staircase would suffice for this overly picky coiled piece of metal.

The escalators in the Library were actually working for once, and figuring that the stair depth would be standard for all escalators this would be a prime testing ground. After one stair the slinky rolled over and was able to fall down another. The only reason it reached the bottom is because the escalator carried it down. The hopes of an endless slinky run on the upwards running escalator was dashed by the inability to traverse the distance of one stair.

The stairs outside the library had the same depth problem, it appears the architects were more worried about pedestrian safety than slinky usage.
The staircase in the parking garage had promise because from the naked eye they appeared to be steeper than any other staircase attempted. With some coercing the slinky made it down two stairs.

The stairs outside the Campus Life Building and Watson hall were too wide for the slinky to make it down more than one stair.

Every staircase attempted at NIU proved too deep for an adequate slinky run.
NIU is now unfortunately classified not slinky-centric.

The longest run this toy had was when I accidentally knocked ol' slink off my desk and it walked onto my thigh, then my chair then onto the floor.

Cold and defeated the slinky returned to its original resting place, inside it's packaging where the overly colorful box art was hard pressed to disappoint.

Let's recap the reasons for taking New York and D.C. to orange fear level.

1. The Democratic convention just wrapped, this is a good way to prevent the current administration from addressing any questions surrounding Kerry's proposed plan for the nation.

-- Also to try and prevent the standard candidate bounce in the polls, a great diversionary tactic.


2. It's a brilliant idea to raise the fear level right after the Democratic convention and lower it right before the Republican convention, which they invariably will do.

-- Expect the level to go down for some time, then right around November , watch it shoot up, and new threats of war, because the public is less likely to change presidents during war time.


3. The reasoning for raising it, is because of intellegence they recieved four years ago.


4. Either that, or they got it from a four year old. Which, I wouldn't rule out for this administration.

I feel beyond scatterbrained today, so here is a few links for you folks to chew on.

I've since officially switched to itunes permanently. It's the most streamlined computer music player out there.

Check out JibJab. It has a wonderfully saterical political flash cartoon on it. Thanks to my mother for sending me the link.

I've been working overtime on my new webpage for class. Screen Masters is getting the Chaz makeover. This little known company is a screen printing service for T-shirts and what have you. In fact, they are going to auction off their assets soon, this web page being included in the deal.

Other random updates:

The tennants in my apartment are all getting switched around, and are causing me angst because we all need to be in one place at one time to sign different people on and off the lease.

One of these incoming tennants is my girlfriend Jaime.

-End Communication.

Friday night I went begrudgingly to see Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. I really didn't want to see this movie, I figured it was going to be some stupid stereotypical teen movie that glorified weed or drinking or sex.
What I found was a fantastic journey tale, where the utmost importance to the leads were purely to get to a white castle and gorge on sliders. It was a refreshing deviation from the teen exploitation films that have been made so often due to the damned success of American Pie.
Now I know what you're saying, wasn't it done by the same guy who did Dude, Where's My Car? Yes it was. And if any of you actually spent the time to watch it, you'd know that the second half of that movie was absolutely brilliant.
So go see Harold and Kumar, even if you're not some stoner junkie, you'll be suckered in to rooting for the overly compelling lead characters.

Trailer: Hi-Res | med-res | lo-res