Hiro Antagonist

The Taliban have released a second video of Bowe Bergdahl, the US soldier captured in Afghanistan. He was captured, allegedly, because he got drunk and stumbled off his base into the local town, which I think has to go down as one of the all-time worst ways to wake up from a bender.

Anyway. This is really interesting video to compare to the first one he released. See it here.

In the first video, released only a few days after he was captured, he looked uncertain and scared (as anyone would be). But this time he looks pretty confident and comfortable, and also well-fed and healthy. He does seem to have been well-treated, and certainly better than a lot of insurgent prisoners have been in Western custody (which appears to be the entire point of the video). He actually almost seems to believe what he's saying too, which makes me wonder if Stockholm Syndrome has set in.

I'm sure there will be some Keyboard Napoleons denouncing this guy as a coward and a traitor for what he says in this speech, which is easy to say when you're not the one captured by Islamic militants.

I think that if that's all they're trying to coerce him into doing, he should do it. Anything to ease the hardship of his captivity. I'd be agreeing with them til the cows came home. Unfortunately for him and his family, the US is unlikely to even try to negotiate his release in a prisoner exchange. Even the Israelis are willing to trade prisoners - Gilad Shalit is reported to be only days away from release under a prisoner exchange, although he's been a captive for over three years.

Somehow though I can't see the US following suit, even the new, supposedly soft-on-terror Obama administration.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays, everyone! :-)

I don't lose things. I just don't. Everything has it's place and when I go to get something and it's not there, I go after Spouse and now Child and verbally berate them until a couple of brain cells start clicking and they admit that they used it, move it, and lo! There it is! And the first thing out of their mouths is ALWAYS:
"I didn't take it! Why do you always blame me?"
Uh huh.
So where the hell is my pink jacket? I thought that it was just in the backseat of my truck and I'd get it next time I go out.

But it's not there.

*Cue ominous music now.

Last time I wore it was at the movie theater, about 2 months ago. Was walking out, wearing it, doing the mental, "be sure you have your belongings check." Which means, there's only one thing that could have happened. We were abducted by aliens and they horked my damn pink jacket! God damn aliens!

If you happen to get abducted by the same aliens and you see my jacket, by all means, snatch it up on your way out of the mother ship!

hello, my name is Alexandra. i haven't been on here for awhile, but i missed it so i brought it back to life.
anyway, things i like include: music, stephen colbert, comedy, photography, poetry, writing, books, and other
geeky and nerdy things. i'd love to make some new friends on here, again. i had some before, but i decided
to start over fresh and make some new friends.

i'm eighteen, i live in virginia, i usually write about things that have happened (teenage angst), some poetry,
quizzes, pictures, links to other blogs or things i'm interested in, or rants about things that have happened
that bother or make me happy.

(:

hope to see you soon.

Christmas was fun this year. Izzy was high as a kite most of this week but she seemed to enjoy her day today and really like all her presents which I'm really glad about (she was trying to get us all to play Hungry Hippos right after dinner). We did the usual getting up and upening presents at home/ go over to my dads to see him, Cara and Teresa for a bit/ go home for dinner with Mum routine. It was relatively warm today and the snow started to thaw a bit to we had no problems going over to see my dad - I was glad about that.

I got some money from both my mum and dad - I do try to suggest things they should buy me instead but they cannot comprehend such items. I was planing to spend it on some underwear, a shelf for my room and maybe a book about animation but my camera seems to have stopped working for no reason tonight so... I don't know, I'll have a proper look at it in the morning. I've also wanted a graphics tablet for years now and never got round to getting one... who knows if I ever will.

I got a bunch of smaller items too, including a hat I really like (I actually bought it myself from the H&M sale and then wrapped it and a Dinosaur Jr. CD for Ava to give me for Christmas since she is utterly crap at present buying) and some USB fairy lights from Teresa. I initially thought the lights were a bit random but turns out are actually really useful since we don't have a working lamp in the bedroom I share with Ava and I can actually see what I'm doing now when I am still up using the computer and she has gone to bed. Teresa also got me some Christmassy shaped bits of wood which really are random and a bit weird. At first I thought they were festive rubber stamps, except they are just blocks of wood without rubber stamp bits on them. I'll have another look at them tomorrow as it has occurred to me they might be some kind of traditional puzzle thing... however I suspect this is rather optimistic thinking.

In between watching tv tonight (Doctor Who, The Royle Family, Gavin and Stacey), I have mainly been re-reading Optic Nerve comics and eating trifle. I must say I was loving the Master-fest in D. Who - I love that John Simm plays him, he's so wee and fiesty. Also, Spooks last night was ace - Harry really needs to sort out some new staff for next year though! I miss Ashes to Ashes, hopefully it will be back on sooooon.

Over the last few days I have mainly been doing Christmas shopping (I did mine, then had to go out and do the people Ava missed for her on Christmas eve - arg!), wrapping presents (apparently I'm the only person who can wrap in the household) and general tidying up. On Monday night Mark came round with ticket money he owed me from going to the Doctor Who thing last weekend and we went out to the garden with Izzy for an inpromptu sledging/ snowball session. We also did have a half arsed attempt at making a snowman but it really wasn't happening. Mark threw a snowball right at the base of my back because I was wearing annoying low waisted jeans and it all melted down my arsecrack - lovely stuff - oh how he laughed.

I got a shiny new red DSi for christmas, amongst other things! It's really fantastic, and I like Flipnote studio quite a lot. I wonder whether I'll ever make anything decent with it. I'm really glad to have a new DS though, and I love the red.

I hope everyone has had a nice christmas! :3

. . . is a life-sized version of this bad mo-fo.



With duster, mop and vacuum cleaner attachments.


Shamelessly stolen from nebris.

http://xkcd.com/680/

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

Dupont Biere de Miel, De Glazen Toren Ondineke, De Glazen Toren Canaster, Chimay Cinq Cents, Corsendonk Christmas Ale, Abbaye-Abdij du Val-Dieu, Maredsous Brown, Maredsous Tripel, Lindemans Framboise x2

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

Just the yard:

( gardening )

My own brand of bitter scabrous joie-de-vivre reaches critical mass this time of year as the festival of misery, over consumption and wastefulness that is Christmas rumbles gluttonously over the horizon like a vast slow-moving steam roller. We've all been anticipating this crap ever since tinsel and fairy lights started erupting over the shops like a Yuletide pox in about October so at least we can now throw our hands up, admit defeat and prepare ourselves for the inevitable squabbles that will occur when you sit several genetically-similar humans around a dinner table for an afternoon of gormandising.

People always act with wounded surprise when you slag off this most jolly time of year, but if you think about the story of Christmas it's bound to be pretty fucking dire, really. It's a festival built around the story of a woman giving birth without anaesthetic in a cave. To add a level of drama to proceedings her husband isn't even the father and then all these weird blokes turn up to pay homage to the kid. First some shepherds traipse through bringing even more unhousetrained livestock into close contact with a newborn child and then three posh stoners who claim to have followed a fucking star across the desert appear bringing fantastically inappropriate gifts. Quite what the fuck the Biblical Magi were doing bringing Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh they'd presumably bought at the 24h garage down the road, I have no idea. Myrrh is an embalming ointment used in funeral rites, so presumably they considered buying the Virgin Mary a teeny tiny child's coffin, too. "Here you go, love. Got you this just in case the little bugger snuffs it, eh? You are sharing a cave knee-deep in enough donkey shit to keep Hercules busy in the Augean stables until next April, so y'know. Just saying..."

Anyway: Here is the thrilling & exciting conclusion to the Large Hadron Advent Collider Calendar.

Merry Christmas you lot.

If not actually Christmas then substitute your own holiday of preference and have one of them instead.

I MISS FARAZ. :(

The apartment is totally a mess lol.

My life is boring without him. Damn.

It`s Christmas eve!!!! So I wanna write my entry now. 8D And then see if anybody else wrote their entry early. Or live in New Zealand and are on their computers at 3 am in the morning. But I do that sometimes.

MERRY CHRISTMAS !!!!!!!! 

Frohe Weihnachten !!!!!!!

クリスマスおめでと　!!!!!!!!

Joyeux Noel !!!!!!!!

Buon natale e felice anno nuovo !!!!!!

And. Uh. That`s all I know. And the Italian was stolen from the internet, heh. ^^;;;

I hope you guys all have the best Christmas ever! 8D

Sorry I kinda dissapeared for a while. I`m not busy at all by the way. If I`m not travelling around (I`ve been to Hokkaido and going to Korea in a few days time) I`m snoring away in some hotel or other. Or watching television. How awesome is it that hotels have channels in what seems like 9806795048 languages? Yeah. My holiday wasted. Just like that.

Yay for pretentious Christmas programs. Ngggg. *go watches more television*

Sorry for the brightness of this post. It`s the festive season after all. Just... the three of us. -______- My family doesn`t deem it important for us to get together during Christmas.
 

( Life in Our House )

Cleaning, scraping, scrubbing.
You know, this way, the house gets thoroughly cleaned once a year. BECAUSE WE HAVE TO GO OVER THERE AND CLEAN UP AFTER A STUPID TENANT!
Apparently, this one couldn't afford the power bill since several lights were missing and unscrewed. Obviously, that's the real reason he broke the lease.

So, we get there with lots of energy and plans to repaint. There's even this stain on the wall from the previous tenant (god knows what it could be), we painted Kilz over it last time, coat of primer, and 2 coats paint. Didn't help. So, was going to remove that piece of drywall, replace, paint. No big deal.

We get there, get started, by 3pm we're just like, "who gives a fuck!" Spouse slapped some paint over the stain, said, "Screw it," to touch up in the blue room. Barely even put back light bulbs or scrubbed all the walls. Technically, we really should repaint the whole interior--it's peach. PEACH! Hey, we moved in and painted almost 20 years ago. Peach and teal were awesome! Cottage cheese ceilings that shed when you paint them, cathedral ceilings that are so impossible to paint (I don't know how we did it the first time) and dammit, you know the next tenant is just going to fuck it all up again, so why bother? It's so damn draining to be there. We couldn't take it anymore and decided to just go back tomorrow.

So, back again tomorrow. Finish the bits inside (once more having to remove and reseal the bathtub because all the grout is separated from the wall. I guess having 2 kids jumping up and down in the tub will do that. I'll take my carpet cleaner over to get out the stains (they're suppose to have the carpet cleaned before they move out but jackass broke the lease, had to be evicted, and slunk off into the night without even giving us the keys). Then it's the outside with a year of weeding to do and power-washing the exterior.
Called the realtor and begged them to please get back to us about selling the house instead of just renting again but haven't heard back. Too many foreclosures to dump the albatross, I'm sure of it. For tax reasons alone, we need to dump that shithole this by next year. It looks like the hot water heater has a small leak that that's a fun $500.00 purchase. Plus we got the water heater replaced about the same time as we got the new roof and shit, we just can't afford all that. We didn't even break even this time because we had to lower the rent to get a tenant. I hope it burns down in the middle of the night.

18 soon to be 19 next month.
Mother of 2.. daughter of 1.
I have major daddy issues that I talk about a lot.
Due to teen pregnancy and my anti-social behavior in the past I have 1 friend to my name.
I used to have 2 but 1 of them decided my father made a better friend than I did.

I'm loyal, protective and blunt.
I see LJ friends as real friends and feel for them.
I'm an active poster and commenter.
I comment pretty much every entry because I always have something to say and I'm not shy about saying it.
If you're sharing a real issue I'm gonna share a real solution I feel could help.


Right now I have few friends whom I adore but I want more reading material. I want to read about life from more people's point of view. I want to connect. If you're interested in anything I have to offer add me. I'll add you right back.

I love VA--I picked these up by the register at a local gas station. :)