when I started this blog five years ago, I was a pet sitter and the name animal-crackers made sense. now I'm a stay-at-home-dad and freelance writer, but rather than confuse everyone by getting a different blog, it's just easier to keep posting things here.


Tuesday, February 27, 2007

24 random

1) I'm proofing an index for the business reference book I helped edit. It's a 108-page list of executives. Each page has 320 names, and I've finished 81 pages. That's almost 26,000 names.

2) My eyes, they bleed.

3) What's up with Battlestar Galactica lately? Still one of my favorite shows, but the writing has been off since the holiday break. People are rallying to Baltar? Adama's going to shoot Cally? Weak.

4) I you're going to write a TV series based on a ragtag group of survivors floating through space looking for Earth with billions of robots on their collective asses -- then it should at least be realistic.

5) An MBA classmate sits in a San Antonio cell awaiting possible deportation to his native Sierra Leone. Four of his five children are US citizens. He has lived here for 13 years and has two degrees from UT.

6) Here's the problem: In 1992 he helped with a coup and became a leader in the junta. He was among the eight men who ruled the country for two years.

7) During these two years, about 30 ex-leaders were summarily executed -- extrajudiciously is what the State Department memo says. That means no trial.

8) The US can deport any foreigner who took part in official torture or extrajudicious executions.

9) My classmate says he did help lead the coup but denies taking part in the executions. He became disallusioned with how his junta controlled the country. That's why he left Sierra Leone. That, and a scholarship from the UN didn't hurt.

10) The UN offers certain people (like coup leaders) scholarships to leave their countries. It's supposed to promote peace and understanding.

11) I wonder how that's going.

12) And I don't know how I'm supposed to feel about my classmate being jailed or maybe deported. I know the guy. He's a nice guy. He works really freaking hard, he's smart and he has more integrity than most of the people we graduated with.

13) He was 20 when he joined the army, 24 when the coup occurred. Can you imagine? When I was 20 I was reporting for the student newspaper and delivering balloons in a gorilla costume trying to make rent on an over-priced apartment.

14) Back on the subject of bad TV -- L&O Criminal Intent sucks lately. That last five or six episodes started with musical montages. What the fuck?

15) And you know who else sucks? Cadbury. Tis the season of Cadbury eggs, and I swear they're half the size they were last year.

16) The first Cadbury egg I ever had was spring 1984 in Heathrow Airport.

17) Somehow my parents scraped together enough money to send me to Europe for 10 days with a group of gifted students so I could have my first Cadbury egg.

18) Thanks Mum. Thanks Dad.

19) That was the same trip I tried to climb off a balcony in Amsterdam because a couple of older kids locked me in my hotel room to fuck with me. I thought I'd show them by climbing out the window to the ground floor and sneaking up behind them.

20) My room was on the third floor. I got stuck and the older kids had to hoist me back up onto the balcony.

21) And yet somehow they thought I was gifted.

22) Amsterdam sucks when you're 12.

23) King's Cross rocks when you're 16.

24) Yeah, Phil. You know what I'm talking about.
posted by todd at 12:12 AM

1 Comments:

Hee, love the Cross.

4:23 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home