not meeting goals

I wanted to be done with my translation by now. But I'm not. Which kind of sucks. Time to redouble my work efforts.

Yes I am

This is beyond lame

Big thanks to whoever does the Dead Kennedeys MySpace page (I know it's no one from DK) for posting this.

Apparently Wal-Mart has launched a marketing website aimed at young teens disguised as a social networking site. Just go to it and watch the video that plays when the page loads up. I'm sure that pretty much all of their target demographic can see through this; kids are pretty good at smelling bullshit. There's nothing less cool than something like this. Why would they want it when there already is MySpace?

See the Advertising Age online article for a decent summary and critique and and also check out Walmart Watch for tons of info on how Wal Mart screws workers, costs our government (and therefore you and me indirectly) millions of dollars, and in general behaves unethically.

I'm amazed

I must not have been the only one to remark about the futility of time sensitive notices that don't reference time zone (or some other frame of reference.) As I type this right now there is a blogger.com outage notice posted next to the "status" link that is "at 5PM PDT." (Of course, that was a few hours ago; presumably they just haven't taken down the sign yet, unless it's for tomorrow...) Anyway, I'm glad to see this.

I'm going to vote today

In the democratic primary for governor. Cathy Cox is getting my vote. The other guy (Mark Taylor) seems sleezy. Also, if he wins, he is not too different from the current Republican good ol' boy guvner, and I really don't think he has a chance at winning. Cox on the other hand might stand a chance... I hope.

my thoughts exactly, except much better researched and thought out, and therefore far more authoritative

There is an excellent immigration essay you can see now-- go and read it before it gets archived and the greedy NYTimes makes you pay for it.

The basic premise is the irony inherent in much of the current anti-immigrant discourse considering the fact that the Spanish colonized in what is currently the U.S. before the English did.

Another thing that comes to mind, Congressasswipe Tom Tancredo is quoted toward the end of the piece implying that "multiculturalism" (whatever that means) will lead to the downfall of "Western Civilization." Since much of the fuss is over language and country of origin and ethnic heritage (although some pretend it is over more tangible political issues) this puzzles me. To me, Spain (and by extension all of Latin America; you have to accept this if you also accept that the U.S. is a manifestation of "Western Civilization") and the Spanish language and culture are every bit a part of Western Civilization as English is, if perhaps not more so (by being more closely related to Rome/Latin.) What a fucking retard.

Which reminds me, many times when I am connected to a call for which I am going to interpret, the English speaker informs me that they have "a Spanish person on the line." Of course, the person on the line is almost certainly NOT Spanish but instead Mexican, Guatemalan, Cuban, etc. I realize what they mean to say and I'm not trying to be obtuse, but consider how many of us would not hesitate to correct someone if they referred to us as "English."

As I almost always point out before I get too far along on rants like these, especially when I am simply spouting out various ideas only loosely connected, politics and history are not my strong points. (Which is why I have refrained from further commentary on the Mexican presidential election.) I welcome debate and correction. It seems to me that, as so many have pointed out, the current fuss over immigration is just typical pre-election wedge issue bullshit. I don't think that illegal immigration will ever end in the U.S. without some major changes to our economy and the world economy. Many (not just hotels and restaurants but all kinds of businesses) businesses, some of them huge, have come to depend on immigrants both "illegal" and legal for the bulk of their workforce. Not only that, but they hire undcoumented immigrants knowingly, completely on purpose. This lets them save tons of money, (and presumably some of that savings is passed on to the consumer.) Until these companies are either forced to comply with the law or until they do so willingly (neither of which is very likely), all other factors remaining equal, there will continue to be much illegal immigration.

my mistake, I guess

There is a link titled "Learn more" to the right of the aforementioned outage announcement, which does specify PDT, which was what I had guessed. But still. I stand by my original point. Time is meaningless without a frame of reference.

minor progress

(by the way, there is a warning on the blogger site of a scheduled outage at "4:00PM." Someone needs to realize that without specifying a time zone, this news is hard to put to use... duh... anyway...)

So the three things I needed to do but didn't want to do the last time I was typing away here I have since done and am pleased. One of them was finish working on a translation I had to do and am now on the second of the two big translations I have this summer.

I'm a little disappointed that I haven't gotten a lot of court interpreting work, though. I have had several calls that I had to turn down because of school and now that summer is here, next to nothing. The one call that I was excited about and blogged about back in May actually was cancelled so I actually haven't done any court interpreting since March or so. Which is fine. I've got more than enough to do as it is, but it would be nice to get some more legal interpreting in person experience (as opposed to over the phone) to stay sharp.

no fun (well, maybe a little at the expense of others)

I have at least three worthwhile tasks I could be doing but really just don't feel like doing anything.

Not enough will or mental energy left to do any more writing or proofreading.

Don't really feel like any serious reading.

Nothing good on T.V.

Too early to go to bed.

Yeah, I know, I'm pretty lame. What's my fucking problem? Who do I think I am anyway? Who gives a shit? I don't know.


I would like to share this with you all, though, and also thank my friend Jason for posting it via MySpace. The headline really (well almost) says it all "Awkward moments abound in penis pump trial." Apparently a judge (with twenty-three years of experience) in Oklahoma has been charged with indecent exposure for using his penis pump while he was at seated on his mighty bench at work.

I was curious to see if this trial has finished or not and did a google search and found this with the much better headline "Penis pump judge faces stiff sentence." Leave it to the Brits.

It turns out he was convicted and may face a steep fine, a year in prison, have to register as a sex offender and possibly lose his state pension! Stiff sentence indeed. I think the fine and sex offender thing are reasonable but I think he still has a right to his pension. Oh well. Fucked up news stories like this really are great fun. It would seem fitting to comment in a cliched way about the glory of our judicial system at this point, but considering the defendant in this case, that would just be too ironic.