FUNK!

It’s just a really fun word.

You know, it sounds kinda dirty but it totally is not at all.  Funk music is fun to listen to (ref. George Clinton and the P-Funk All Stars).  If something is described as funky, I think that it is probably pretty cool and a little quirky (another really fun word).

However, for me right now, funk describes my state of being.  For some reason I don’t want to work on my research/thesis at all.  I’m supposed to graduate in May, and if nothing else, the Army says that I have to move in May, so I should really be working on this Masters of Science thing, but I don’t wanna.

The FUNK would be why I haven’t posted in forever.  I’m just feeling funky, but not in a good way.

The bad part is that when I leave school and go home, I’m only slightly more productive.  Funk-a-delic.  Funk-i-fied.

Or is it just plain funky?

Totally Procrastinating

Yep, I should really be working on a couple hundred different things right now, but I felt like writing something really quickly instead.

So, Sandy posted about our new “baby” a couple weeks ago.  Well, we figured out that her Best Good Friend had our baby’s twin.  Seriously, it is scary how much they look alike.  Well, turns out (and we all knew it, just hoping to sneak it by) that the BGF could only have ONE cat according to her lease.  So the landlord had an unfortunate find when he came across the new kitten.  (By the way, we named ours Wilson partially from the guy on House and partially because of Tom Hanks on Cast Away.  The BGF named hers Dozer, the brother of Tank on the Matrix.)

Anywho, when Sandy told me about this, I said “What the hell is the difference between one cat and two?”  And she came back with the nice reply of, “And what’s the difference between two cats or three?”  See how that came back to bite me?  She’s witty that Sandy.  So now we’ve got Dozer until the BGF’s lease is up (in May) and she can move to a more cat friendly place.  Whether she finds a more feline friendly place or not, I don’t think we’re moving Dozer across the country.

Having actual twins is one thing, but these two are crazy.  Dozer has not been accepted by all the animals yet, but she’s playing with her brother and tearing up the house now.  Trying to sleep while they’re scampering from the bedroom to the kitchen and back is a little difficult.  It only makes it worse when Tiger, aka the Crumdgeon, is growling at them when they stop long enough for him to be annoyed that they’re too close.  At midnight I finally threw Tiger out of the bedroom and got some sleep.  Until the babies started walking all over me while I was in bed.

Its just funny to watch these two kittens that look almost exactly alike playing, running, and wrestling around the house.

Funny, semi-political video

Okay, so Saturday morning I was cruising around this thing called the World Wide Web, and I found this video on YouTube.  It is semi-political, but this guy is hilarious.  And by hilarious, I mean really funny.  Turns out that these two brothers decided to stop using text to communicate to each other (i.e. instead of email or a normal blog like this one, they vlog).  This is one of the brothers updating the other on Sen. McCain’s choice for VP.  Pretty funny.

By the way, on Saturday morning, this already had 70,000 plus views.  Considering that the VP choice had only be public for about 24 hours, that’s pretty impressive (if you ask me anyways, but you didn’t, but its my blog and I’m writing and you’re viewing it, so you sort of did ask me. so HA!).

BMI is not for you!

Okay, so I was reading through the wife’s post today, and it reminded me of something I’ve wanted to say.  She mentioned the fact that we’ve got the Wii Fit and that it tells us we’re obese… according to our BMI.

I’m glad that the inventor of BMI came up with it, but I’m pissed that it is being misused.  I got into an argument with some people on the Runner’s World forums about BMI and the fact that I’m obese according to it.  I admit that I have some weight I would could lose, but I’m not obese.  One of the people that supported me on the BMI issue in the RW message boards mentioned that it was meant to be used for populations, not individuals.  TOTALLY!  But yet, Nintendo makes sure to use BMI to tell you that you’re obese or overweight or “normal.”  What a bunch of crap.

So, I got on Wikipedia and searched for Body Mass Index, and sure enough, in the first sentence it says:

The body mass index (BMI), or Quetelet index, is a statistical measure of the weight of a person scaled according to height. As such, it is useful as a population measure only, and is not appropriate for diagnosing individuals.

Go figure.  But why is it so popular to use for individuals today?  It was invented sometime between 1830 and 1850 to be used for “social physics.”  Who are the idiots that think we should all worry about our individual BMI?

So now I’m trying to share the truth about BMI.  BMI is not for you, but it could be for your entire city.  Statistically speaking, you should have more than 30 people to figure a BMI for a “population.”

If your M.D. says that you’re overweight according to your BMI, ask them if they really know what the Body Mass Index is supposed to be used for and then ask for another M.D.  Don’t get me started on those crackpots…. that’s a whole new post.

Mean thoughts

Okay, so there are a couple of chuckleheads that ride unicycles around campus. It doesn’t exactly get them there faster, but they do get noticed. I was walking around campus today and saw said unicycle cabled up with the bicycles at one of the bike racks. I had this really funny and very very not nice thought. The goof ball didn’t run the cable through his one wheel. How hard would it have been to secure the one wheel?

Now, bicycles look sad and pitiful when they are missing the front wheel because someone stole it, but what would a unicycle look like if someone stole the ONLY wheel that it had? I just had to laugh and smile to myself and think that I should think nicer.

Now that I think about it some more, you probably could have taken the seat to, the way this guy had it un-”secured.” How sad would that be to come out and all that’s left is the primary part of the frame to your little one-wheeled-cycle? And really, once the seat was off, I don’t think it would have been that hard to take the frame either. Good thing this is Manhattan, Kansas.

Dissent is patriotic…oh really?

Whether you believe that we went to Iraq for the right reasons or think we didn’t, it doesn’t really matter. Use what you learned from that to voice your opinion the next time Congress (that’s right, Congress) is talking about invading another country.  As it is now, whether we went to Iraq to find Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) or not, we’re in Iraq, that’s a fact that you can’t really hide from.  We completely dismantled the previous Iraqi government and are now trying to teach the Iraqi’s to govern themselves again, ideally in a more peaceful way. Maybe this little Iraqi experiment will work. I hope that it does, otherwise I don’t believe that we’re getting what we’ve paid for.  I don’t mean just monetary payments, that’s only part of it.  I mean paid for in blood, sweat, tears, heartache, and patriotic souls.

Okay, now for the confusing subject title, I keep seeing these bumper stickers around campus that say “Dissent is patriotic.” Just so we’re clear on this, the definition for dissent is:

dissent, verb [ intrans. ], hold or express opinions that are at variance with those previously, commonly, or officially expressed: two members dissented from the majority | [as adj. ] ( dissenting) there were only a couple of dissenting voices.

And just to make sure that we are all understanding the meaning of patriotic, I am pasting that definition from my Mac dictionary here as well:

patriotic, adjective, having or expressing devotion to and vigorous support for one’s country.

Now, I’m no genius, but to me it doesn’t seem that these two definitions match. If you’ve got an opinion, that’s great. It is your constitutional right to voice it and vote for candidates that support it, but don’t try to twist logic just to make yourself feel better about not having the same opinion as the majority of people around you.  Don’t try to call yourself a patriot (a person who vigorously supports their country and is prepared to defend it against enemies or detractors) just for having a different opinion.

Dissent in and of itself is not patriotic, it’s just having an opinion differing from the majority.  At this point, many people are asking for the troops to come home anyway.  Dissenting from the patriotic views of others and trying to call yourself a patriot just because you are dissenting, is not patriotic in and of itself either.  The people that put of these bumper stickers on their vehicles are missing the point.  I’ve got no problem with them having their own opinion.  In fact, that’s part of the reason that I’m in the military.  I support their right to have their own opinion.  I don’t support the fact they are twisted in their logic and think that if they just act peacefully, nothing will ever happen to them. They’re sheep if they believe that there are not bad people in the world that will do them harm just for fun.

It’s fine by me if you have your opinion, but recognize those that do their part to protect sheep from the wolves of the world.

This has been digging at me for a while, so now that I’ve started this blog, I’ve got somewhere to put it down instead of just letting it burn at my mind.  I’ve got two draft blogs that I’m going to try to post this weekend that say more along this line of thinking.

Stay tuned….