Where’s the peanut butter?!

I missed this in the news last year - good thing for the href="http://cheap-cds.com/surf/disps/455626">new David Cross CD!

US soldiers in Iraq asked to pray for Bush

They may be the ones facing danger on the battlefield, but US soldiers
in Iraq are being asked to pray for President George W Bush.

Thousands of marines have been given a pamphlet called “A Christian’s
Duty,” a mini prayer book which includes a tear-out section to be
mailed to the White House pledging the soldier who sends it in has been
praying for Bush.

“I have committed to pray for you, your family, your staff and our
troops during this time of uncertainty and tumult. May God’s peace be
your guide,” says the pledge, according to a journalist embedded with
coalition forces.

The pamphlet, produced by a group called In Touch Ministries, offers a
daily prayer to be made for the US president, a born-again Christian
who likes to invoke his God in speeches.

Sunday’s is “Pray that the President and his advisers will seek God and
his wisdom daily and not rely on their own understanding”.

Monday’s reads “Pray that the President and his advisers will be strong
and courageous to do what is right regardless of critics”.

Gone from ABC’s website but the wayback machine still has href="http://web.archive.org/web/20030603201208/http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s819685.htm">http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s819685.htm

Music
• If I Should Fall from Grace - The Shane MacGowan Story
• Paul Westerberg - Come Feel Me Tremble (DVD)
• Paul Westerberg - Come Feel Me Tremble (CD)
• Dead Man Shake
• The Clash: Self Titled or Give em Enough Rope
• almost anything by The Faces or The Small Faces, but maybe try: There Are But Four Small Faces, Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake, Long Player, A Nod Is as Good as a Wink…To a Blind Horse

books
• Google Hacks
• Amazon Hacks

Expensive gadgets
• iRiver iHP-120

Excellent! Zippy archives are
available online. A little href="http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/wget.html">wget and the following
sprintf formats and now I’ve got something to add to my collection of
comics! The recent href="http://zippythepinhead.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=12-Apr-03&Category_Code=a2003&Product_Count=10">Subtle
Political Analysis might be a good introduction to Zippy for those who
don’t “get” it.

• Sundays: “http://zippythepinhead.com/Merchant2/graphics/00000001/sundays/images/%02s%02s%02s.gif”, , ,
• 95-end95:”http://zippythepinhead.com/Merchant2/graphics/00000001/%02d/images/ZI%02d%02d%02d.gif”, , , ,
• 96-99: “http://zippythepinhead.com/Merchant2/graphics/00000001/%02d/images/ZIT%01d%02d%02d.gif”, , $Y, ,
• 2003.01.06-today: “http://zippythepinhead.com/Merchant2/graphics/00000001/%04d/images/%02d%02d%02d.gif”, , , ,
• 2000-2003.1.4:”http://zippythepinhead.com/Merchant2/graphics/00000001/%04d/images/ZIT%01d%02d%02d.gif”, , $Y, ,

I’d already had Calvin
from 85-90 (and the books) so this is a welcome addition. Yow! Maybe I
should have asked for my Neutron Bomb in PAISLEY–

If there were any question whether my wife is the coolest ever, the href="http://www.iriveramerica.com/estore/ihp-120.htm">iRiver iHP-120
and collection of all the href="http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?P=amg&opt1=1&sql=replacements">Replacements’
cd’s I opened as early Christmas presents should put it to rest.

The Kill-A-Watt energy meter

Sears Craftsman LaserTrac Level.

I went to DC last weekend for the first time since href="http://www.finnegan.com/lawyers/index.cfm?id=1205">my sister moved
out there about 4 years ago. Has it really been that long? Wow, it’s about
time. My mom, oldest brother, and his oldest son were also out over that
weekend. Some of the highlights:

• The Corcoran has a great collection
  of American Impressionism and was showing an exhibit on the href="http://www.corcoran.org/exhibitions/Exhib_current.asp?Exhib_ID=69">Quilts
  of Gees Bend
• that
  creepy chair that’s been on Yahoo’s most forwarded pictures
• Dinner at the Kennedy Center
  before my mom and sister go to href="http://www.dc-opera.org/opera/lacenerentola.htm">La Cenerentola,
  we’re in the middle of all the tuxedos and my nephew Jack spills some Sprite on
  the crotch of his sweatpants and decides it’s time to go walk around the crowd My poor brother escorts.
• A guy on the mall is
  selling political buttons, including “OCCUPATION IS LIBERATION : BUSH/ORWELL
  2004″

Well we went to Manzanita over Memorial Day and had a very nice time. I’ve
put up href="http://purl.org/net/pjn/slideshows/Manzanita%202003/">pictures
from the trip as well as made a href="http://purl.org/net/pjn/slideshows/Manzanita%202003/Manzanita150kbps.wmv">~6MB
movie of kite flying and xbox playing with href="http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/moviemaker/downloads/moviemaker2.asp">Windows
Movie Maker 2 which is astonishingly easy to use. Ang and Greg organize
this each year and book href="http://www.ribboninvestmentfirm.com/captainshideaway.html">The
Captain’s Hideaway. After the costs are split up it’s a great deal.

We learned a fun new game from Alicia, maybe it’s called “the song game”?
The best games tend to survive on content rather than fancy names. Anyway,
teams split up, some word or motif is identified (”cars” or “summer”) and
then the teams have to come up with a song involving that topic and sing it.
It goes until somebody gives up or I suppose can’t handle the singing from
somebody who’s overly enthusiastic about the game. We kept trying to come
up with the transition from the opening stanza “You don’t have to front on
me dear” to the part where Easy-E starts talking about his “automobile” (in
the N.W.A. classic of the same name) but otherwise our Ang, Jenny, Tanya,
Tom and I played a pretty good game. Nobody violated the explicit rule
about leaving fecal matter on the floor as far as I know, so hopefully we’ll
get to go back next year - yay!

This weekend we’re travelling out of town again to head to Tanya’s
maid-of-honor’s wedding to a rock
star. It ought to be a bunch of fun and it will be nice to get away
for a couple days. Pictures ought to follow.

whee!

Last night we went to a great production of href="http://www.seattlerep.org/SeasonPlays03/ShowRJ.html">Romeo &
Juliet at the Seattle Rep. Afterwards we stopped at the arcade in the href="http://www.funforest.com/">Fun Forest and while I was trying to
win Tanya a stuffed blue M&M (or just a little blue disc shaped thing) from
a skill crane she wanted a gumball. She was especially lucky though and got
one with “FF” written on it. It looked kind of gross and I decided we had to
be winners of something. We went to the cashier’s desk and they said we
could have ANYTHING from the prize shelves that we wanted! Woo-hoo! Tanya is
now the happy parent of a big black stuffed hippo! And I contributed $0.75
to the skill crane coffer.