zhasper.com

As soon as Dubyah was confirmed for a second term, I expected the attempts to repeal that section of the US constitution limiting presidents to two terms would be on the way.

Now Dvorak points out that moves are already afoot to do exactly this...

I have to admit that Dvorak comes across as a bit of a raving nutter to me; he seems to have the typical conspiracy-theorist trait of connecting widely disconnected snippets, taking them out of context, and mooshing them together till they seem to form a connected pictured. That doesn't mean that he's wrong though... and most of the things he mentions there (eg, the existence of a bill to repeal the 22nd amendment) are verifiable fact (which I've not yet verified myself).

The next step I'd expect to see would be some reason why the president has to be granted extra-ordinary authority permitting him to, eg, suspend elections during times of crisis, followed by the declaration of a crisis. A war would be perfect for this - particularly a war on a vague, loosely defined enemy, that could suddenly pop up anywhere, at any time..

This, combined with other things that Dvorak mentions about how the religious right is starting to gain power in the US all seems vaguely familiar.. "Future History", anyone?

Please keep in mind that I'm Australian; we don't have anything equivalent to the 22nd amendment here, nor do I neccessarily think that such a thing is good or neccessary (nor do I neccessarily think that it's bad - we've had Lil Johnny in power for, what, 4 3-year terms now? That's not a particularly good thing..). I'm just making a comment on how un-surprised I'll be when Dubyah makes official his intent to never let the power of being president out of his family...

So what else has been happening in the life of zhasper lately?

Not a lot, really. A lot of staying home, watching tv, chatting to people on the net... I'm going to Melbourne in a few weeks (12th-20th or thereabouts) and have suddenly realised I need to save up some money for that..

Work's going fairly well. Am enjoying the work. Not as much, perhaps, as I'd like; but at least partially that's because I have a tendency to get overinvolved in work. Having a boss who encourages my interest, but actively dissuades me from getting overly involved, is a Good Thing (TM). I'm nearing the end of my contract, but hoping (expecting, even) an extension.

There are a lot of thoughts that flow through my head daily that make me think "must blog that later", but I've not got any easy way of doing that; so they never get written down. Need to start getting more rigorous about that..

So.. that's it for an update for tonight.

I've also been not doing much reading of late - my downtime feed-me-stimulus-to-stop-my-brain-from-dying time has been taken up by listening to podcasts..

I really really want to get back into some kind of programming. I want to write something to let postings here get posted on LJ also, saving me a lot of effort and worry. I'll get around to it one of these days...

I read this story ages ago. A man goes to a drive-thru frozen custard shop, gets a pint of chocolate custard, takes it home, starts eating.. finds a finger inside.

Initially it was the "Finger! ew!" aspect that grabbed my attention, but I've just realised..

The man went to a *custard* shop.

A shop where they sell *custard*.

Frozen custard.

Frozen, chocolate, custard.

They have shops for this?

Even more bizarre - it's a drive-through! You don't even have to get out of your car to get your daily dose of fatty badness!