I found a pretty neat tool yesterday... Everyone knows it's a little difficult to run around and gather the contact information of your state's Representatives and Senators on the local and federal levels. It's possible, but I've always had to go to individual sites, remember my region, find the guy's site and dig for contact information. Takes longer than I would really like, especially since I keep forgetting which district we're in. But no more! I found the perfect site to learn who you should call for this kind of stuff:

HTTP://WWW.CONGRESS.ORG

That's .ORG, not .GOV... Put in your zip code on the left and voila! Your officials. Go on! Give it a shot... Let's put your voter spirit to the test. You know what else I found? The roll call for the bail out bill yesterday. If you weren't following, it died in the House of Representatives, so everyone on this list is (obviously) a Representative. I'm pleased to announce that Representative Dan Burton (my Representative) voted against this bill. At least the House listens to what we say, eh? If this had gone to the Senate, Senators Evan Bayh and Richard Lugar are notorious for completely ignoring any input whatsoever and I seriously doubt they would have voted against this thing... Why they keep getting in, I don't know. I keep hearing nothing but disappointment come from them. Anyway!

Check out the roll call... Look up your officials using Congress.org and see if they did what everyone wanted. Look, these people voted for the bill against the wishes of a vast majority of voters. It's all over the place... Rush Limbaugh had a Representative on his show yesterday and he said they've had more calls for this bail out bill than they did for the Immigration Amnesty bill last year, and THAT drive of callers swayed the House from 5 against to enough to kill the bill. It was only logical that this bill was killed, too... It was, but very narrowly. Ugh... This Congress is a disgrace. It is consistently the most disapproved of Congress in history and they continue to live up to their nickname "The Do-Nothing Congress", and what little they do try to pass isn't what anybody wants, anyway! Seriously... Ban incandescent lights? Who wanted that? We need to get them out, folks... They're literally worthless.

See that? The markets dropped by 778 points at the most after the bail out bill was killed yesterday... The Democrats went insane and said we're all doomed unless we pass something stupid like that 700 billion dollar inflation and pointed at the stock markets as proof. I have to say that I've always thought Congress was painting a dismal picture of doom just so they could pass their stupid socialist nationalization plans... I mean, come on. Growth and recession. It's the natural ebb and flow of the economy.

But, look! The market's going back up! Not quite recovering completely, but it needs to slow down anyway. The saying "what goes up must come down" applies directly to free market capitalism. Can't keep growing for eternity. (Which is something that the government simply can't seem to accept...) I wouldn't say it's all free and clear... Not by a long shot. With the economy still based so much on the loaning industry that is slowly crumbling beneath us all, I look to the market dropping still further, but I honestly don't think it will crash. Banks aren't crashing in a domino effect like everyone was expecting. There are enough large banks who are well off enough to have taken over everything that's died so far... Most people seem to have kept their money so far, and I think the bank failures will happen slowly, if they even all implode to begin with, so I don't think anything will catch us off guard. If a market crash would have happened, it would have happened this morning... But it didn't. Someone's lying to us.

I'll tell you who: It's the Democrat-controlled Congress. The one comprised of people directly involved with the disaster of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. (Please tell me why those companies are still alive to begin with? And why the overseers and CEOs of those companies aren't in some serious trouble?) I'm not at all pleased with President Bush, either... He's always been known as a crazy spender, but this is just a disgrace. Presidents always go a little crazy at the end of their second term, but this is just insane... I'm glad some (most) Republicans and some (few) Democrats still have their heads screwed on straight and decided to keep government out of the economy. But they're still talking about putting together another bill... I can only hope that it won't happen until after November and with a different set of Representatives and Senators. Seriously, we need to vote out anyone who voted for this. Why? For the simple reason that the vast majority of voters did NOT want this passed, and it just barely died... They only needed 13 more votes to pass it. That's way too close, people. Someone's not listening to their voters and they need axed as soon as possible.

Do you see that? DO YOU SEE THAT? It's pretty much all of Mega Man 9 I've seen...

And Mister Dude, thanks for the gift... You know who you are. Now I feel obligated. Hmm!

(And ya'll are going to be sitting there wondering who in the heck I'm talking about, but I don't care!)

Listening to Rush Limbaugh right now. This just in: The bail out fails. You better believe it... The polls all said the vast majority of the American public was diametrically opposed to giving 700 billion dollars money to failed financial practices. Come on. This is the first rule of free market! If you do good, you succeed and are rewarded with profits! If you do poorly, you fail and learn your lesson to never try that again... So please, someone, tell me how this bail out makes any logical sense? The Democrats under the Clinton administration (although it does reach to Jimmy Carter) pushed for forcing banks to make loans to low-income families in an effort to make housing "fair" for everyone. So all these banks jumped on board and gave loans to people who they didn't check to see if they could even afford paying the loan back... Fannie May and Freddie Mac would buy these loans from the banks and sell them around. Eventually, the housing market slows down and all these loans need to be collected on and BAM! Nobody could pay... One by one, the banks are folding, starting with Fannie and Freddie. Since the stock market is also driven mostly by investors borrowing money to pay for their shares, the very fabric of our capitalist free market is in danger. The loaning industry drives the economy... Now, personally, I believe that if you have to borrow money, then you're not supposed to have whatever you have to get a loan for. But my beliefs aside, that's what's happened.

In charge the Democrats wielding the solution to everything: Inject 700 billion dollars of tax payer money to prop up these failing markets so that borrowers can keep borrowing. Now, I'm not going to get into it all... Everyone pretty much knows what's happened since then. Partisan politics got involved (by the Democrats by allowing their Obamessiah to lead their side of the meeting) and the bill exploded over the weekend, so the Democrats all ran out and tried to pin the failure on the presense of McCain. (Who was, I might add, asked by Gary Paulsen (a Democrat) to come to Washington to rally the Republicans behind the bill.) The media jumped on the Democrat bandwagon and also pointed the finger at the Republicans as being the sole reason the bill failed on Saturday.

Let's completely ignore the fact that the Democrats have the MAJORITY of Congress right now. Remember the elections in 2006? When the Republicans were rooted out and Nancy Pelosi took her position as Speaker of the House and declared an end to the "culture of corruption"? Remember that? I said mentioned back then that the Democrats were complaining that Republicans were the reason that things weren't getting passed. That is, to be blunt, an all-out fabrication. A LIE. How can the minority possibly be the reason why you can't get things passed? If the Democrat party was as unified as they all claim it is, every single Republican could vote NO on ANY bill and every single Democrat could vote YES on ANY bill and they would pass. It's as simple as that... If, for some reason, you wanted to forsake the very economic foundation of the massive worldwide success of this country from the very beginning of this nation by allowing the government to buy banks left and right? If, for some reason, you wanted this bill to pass, you can blame nobody but the Democrats. They could have passed this by themselves if it was as awesome as they claimed it was. Frankly, even they knew that there was something shady and disastrous with this bill and they wouldn't go against the flood of calls from outraged voters who were opposed to this from the start. If it was so great, they could have easily pushed this bill all the way up to President Bush (who shamefully teamed with the Democrats on this issue) without any Republicans involved.

You just watch... Nancy Pelosi and Chris Dodd and Gary Paulsen and all these pathetic excuses for representatives are going to come out and scream and cry that the evil Republicans caused this bill to fail. They're not going to mention that the majority of the American public DID NOT WANT this bill, and that everyone who voted NO on this thing is far more in touch than they are. They're going to try to fracture the unity of this country by themselves by flat out LYING that the Republicans were the reason it failed. If anyone actually paid attention to the votes (I was listening to Rush Limbaugh as the numbers were rolling in), you would have quickly seen that there were clearly some Democrats who were opposed to this bill. No, I'm sorry, but the only reason a majority party fails a bill that they themselves have hyped to no end is because they really weren't as unified as they claimed they were. Don't let them tell you the Republicans failed this bill... Don't let them tell you this bill was a good thing. Yes, a vast majority of the Republicans were against this thing, but, to be honest, anyone who voted against this thing has bonus points in my eyes. I'd love to see a grand tally of votes. See who voted for what... I want to know if my Representative voted the right way or not so I can kick him out if I need to.

To recap: It's official! The bail out is dead... The market will be free to adjust like a free market does. The less the government gets involved with the economy the BETTER, as we have learned with Fannie and Freddie. We're going to hit a recession, no doubt, but at least we won't fall into an inflation induced depression. The market has to fall... the market has to slow down... The failed institutions need to die. The market will be convoluted and it may be rough going for a while, but we've always recovered from things like this and history has taught us, over and over, that the less government screwing around with the market, the better. We'll recover faster... We WILL recover from this and we'll come out bigger and better than ever. Hopefully they won't try to come up with another bill. The market has been in a state of suspended animation this entire week and a bill hasn't even passed! Even the idea that the government might do something is messing with the market... It needs to adjust, so just LEAVE IT ALONE.

Crazy times. The bail out dying is good... The Republicans were on the right side, but even if the Democrats really wanted this passed like they say they did, then they could have gotten this done because they're the majority. Don't let them tell you anything else, because they will. They're losing their standing and they're ANGRY now. Watch out... Don't believe everything (if anything) they say right now.

So I've been watching The X Files... As TW puts it, I'm great at discovering useless connections. I'll show you what we mean. I was watching Season 1, Episode 21: Born Again. Mulder was perusing someone's house, looking for clues, and he comes across a painting that I'd never really paid attention to before:

I recognized it immediately as something we had hanging on our own wall:

Tada! Only we've got a big frame... I mean, the picture itself is 100% identical, it's awesome.

Then, I was watching the Season 1 finale, and it opened with a shot of Mulder sleeping with a movie playing on his TV? I recognized the thing immediately... It's a movie I grew up watching over and over. We'd check it out from the library and I'd overkill the thing. It's something I'll never forget:

See? Mulder's TV... Now here's the same (close enough) screen from the widescreen DVD I have:

It's the original 1959 movie Journey to the Center of the Earth! I'm really impressed with the DVD release, by the way. They even made a little side-by-side restoration comparison clip... They managed to digitally recover the original quality of the negatives before releasing it. I remember the poor color quality, like what you see on Mulder's TV, and while that would be nostalgic, I'm impressed with the restored clarity. The sound kinda needs work, though, but it could also be my soundcard running some odd software 3D positioning. Plus, the sound is perfect in mono mode, which is probably what it was even recorded it, hah.

Plus, then there's this guy from the first episode of the latest season of Heroes: Governor Malden. I didn't recognize him at first, but the voice... Oh man, the voice I totally knew:

Any guesses? It took some digging on my part, because I didn't know the name of the guy until the second episode, but once I got his character name, it was simple. Well, I'll save you the trouble, since you probably think you're too awesome to bother seeing it, but if you've seen Babylon 5, you'll remember this fellow:

John Sheridan, anyone?

And here's one I just remembered as I was looking through my pictures folder... This, too, is from an episode of X Files. Season 1, Episode 14: Lazarus, to be precise. Mulder and Scully go to talk to some specialist who deals with people having experienced briefly being dead and being brought back:

Recognize him? Anyone? Yes? No? Probably not... Then again, if you're an avid fan of Stargate, you might very well remember this fellow as one of the quirkier aliens SG-1 encountered... Does the word "comtraya" ring a bell?

Tada! Harlan! From Stargate SG-1 Season 1, Episode 18: Tin Man...

Am I good?

YOU BET I AM!

Dear Sci-Fi Channel,

Major fan here... No, not of you. Only of science fiction in general. Actually, the only reason I ever tune in to your stuff is to watch Eureka and Stargate Atlantis. It would have been Stargate SG-1, too, but you cancelled that for some reason. Needless to say, science fiction fans are geeks, nerds, and whatever other words you can use to describe people who understand the concepts behind warp drives, wormholes and holographic storage crystals. We're also somewhat obsessive and fanatic when it comes to our TV shows.

Don't think we didn't notice that you cut Stargate Atlantis' opening sequence to 10 seconds from 60 seconds. Don't patronize us when you say it's to make room for more footage... We're science fiction fans and it doesn't take a rocket scientist (which, you know, we could easily be) to notice an increase in commercial time. We could understand starting Eureka off with a shorter sequence to begin with, but to cut both Eureka and Atlantis after seeing how amazing the full sequences are? That's just insulting. We all understand your want to advertise your wrestling matches, but, to be honest and perfectly blunt: Nobody cares. We watch your station for the science fiction, which you are slowly erroding away to make a negligible increase in your profits.

Thank you,

A very angry wolf.

Behold!

The first component of my new computer: The Acer P243Waid 24" Widescreen LCD monitor! My system is pretty much set in stone now, with the exception of the power supply unit, so I'm going to be periodically purchasing parts that don't rely on anything... Stuff like monitor, speakers, CPU heat sink. Work is starting to pick up, so I'm going to take advantage of it! My deadline for a working system is October 28th, which is when Fallout 3 is being released. The ultimate in post-apocalyptic open-ended RPGs, being developed by my very favorite Bethesda Game Studios! (The masterminds behind The Elder Scrolls.) My initial deadline was for Spore, which is clearly already out, and before the World of Warcraft expansion pack, which is now slated for November 13th. Either way, I need a deadline so I can get my butt into action and get this thing made.

I've got an amazing daily routine that I plan on starting Monday: Wake up at 8am and catch up on Google Reader and miscellaneous things that will allow me to wake up enough so that by 9am, I can go to work. Which is really timely, because The Glenn Beck Program runs from 9am to Noon. From Noon to 3pm is The Rush Limbaugh Show, and then from 3pm to 5pm is The Peter Heck Show. I really haven't been eating lunch lately, but if I decide to, lunch break is 1pm to 2pm. If I do that, then I'll have to work until 6pm, which is an extra hour without any radio... But that's where my iPod comes in. I have enough Weird Al stuff to handle an hour of keeping me entertained. So that's 9 to 6 with a 1 hour lunch break to have an 8 hour work day. If I don't eat lunch, which is becoming a favorable option, since in farm country Indiana, lunch during this season consists mostly of fresh garden vegetables which will more than likely make me hungry an hour after eating anyway. (A wolf needs his meat...) It's not like I need to eat lunch anyway... I could stand to lose some weight and I'd rather get over being hungry sooner rather than later. If I don't do lunch, then my work day would be over at 5pm and finish up with Peter Heck... A brilliant arrangement, if I do say so myself, although I can see myself getting bored after the November elections. (Maybe!)

Since the monitor is no longer on my budget, the rest of the components will run me about $1800. That's about 4 to 5 weeks of 8 hour work days. That's not too bad at all, and is well before the October 28th deadline. My brother has offered to help me make up the difference if I need help, which has been so incredibly tempting, but I think it would be best for me to save up on my own... Plus, this gives me another month to wait to see if the revamped 55nm nVidia GTX280 will be released. If not, I'm not going to beat myself over it too badly if I get the 65nm nVidia GTX280 early. As we say in the computer industry: "If you always want to wait for the next latest thing, you'll be waiting forever!" So true... As soon as a new peripheral is released, there's always a new one announced right after. If you keep waiting for the next because it's better, you'll never have a computer. Best not to dwell on what you could have had, especially after you've just purchased a system... Like my laptop? Dell Inspiron 9300. It was the last of its kind, because a mere month after I got mine, they discontinued it and ran with a similarly priced dual-core laptop. I was upset, but, hey... What can you do? It's not like the new model ran for very long, either.