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great reads dorknoodle zombiepoodle squirrelx porktornado daemonchild ckjosh oppusshrugged nitejohnboy OUTSIDE bitchin stuff links get a job shopping Dynomoose Central ebay message board chat wish list the art conspiracy fotolog bitchin stuff free tee shirts BowieNet REALITY Tickets BowieNet Store INSIDE newest older search terms notify profile notes guestbook rings trading card host design 
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Some crazy French woman keeps sending me notes that confirm what I already knew. The French suck! Seriously, I've met literally hundreds of French over the years and they've all been assholes! My anti-france ring offends the French? Good! Be offended. Fuck France. On a related note, Joe brought home a bic lighter this morning and I made him take it back. Not one dime of my family's money has gone to French companies since before the war and I'm happy to make that permenant! Somebody I've never heard of joined the dorknoodle diaryring. My little Trick has some admirerers! The car is all messed up. Going to cost $250 we don't have to fix. It may be time to go begging to Mom again. Man, when this financial shit rains down, it pours! Joe was given the day off because of the car (never mind that we live half a block away from his office). I guess his boss didn't want him walking in the rain. He's spent the day watching really bad movies. right now, it's Attack of the Clones. Ick. I got this funny thing in my email today. GOD'S TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT QUESTIONNAIRE God would like to thank you for your belief and patronage. In order to better serve your needs, He asks that you take a few moments to answer the following questions. Please keep in mind that your responses will be kept completely confidential, and that you need not disclose your name or address unless you prefer a direct response to comments or suggestions. 1. How did you find out about God? ___ Newspaper ___ Bible ___ Torah ___ Book of Mormon ___ Koran ___ Other Book ___ Television ___ Divine Inspiration ___ Word of mouth ___ Dead Sea scrolls ___ My mama done tol' me ___ Near Death Experience ___ Near-life experience ___ National Public Radio ___ Tabloid ___ Burning Shrubbery ___ Who? ___ Other (specify): _____________ 2. Which model God did you acquire? ___ Yahweh __ Jehovah ___ Allah ___ Just plain God ___ Krishna ___ Father, Son & Holy Ghost (Trinity Pak) ___ Zeus and entourage (Olympus Pak) ___ Odin and entourage (Valhalla Pak) ___ Gaia/Mother Earth/Mother Nature ___ None of the above; I was taken in by a false god 3. Did your God come to you undamaged, with all parts in good working order and with no obvious breakage or missing attributes? __ Yes __ No If not, please describe the problems you initially encountered here. Please indicate all that apply: ___ Not eternal ___ Not omniscient ___ Not omnipotent ___ Finite in space/Does not occupy or inhabit the entire universe ___ Permits sex outside of marriage ___ Prohibits sex outside of marriage ___ Makes mistakes (Geraldo Rivera, Jesse Helms) ___ When beseeched, doesn't stay beseeched ___ Requires burnt offerings ___ Requires virgin sacrifices ___ Plays dice with the universe 4. What factors were relevant in your decision to acquire a God? Please check all that apply. ___ Indoctrinated by parents ___ Needed a reason to live ___ Indoctrinated by society ___ Needed target for rage ___ Imaginary friend grew up ___ Hate to think for self ___ Wanted to meet girls/boys ___ Fear of death ___ To piss off parents ___ Needed a day away from work ___ Enjoy organ music ___ Needed focus on whom to despise ___ Needed to feel morally superior ___ Graduated from the tooth fairy ___ My shrubbery caught fire and told me to do it 5. Are you currently using any other source of inspiration in addition to God? Please check all that apply. __ Self-help books __ Tarot, Astrology __ Star Trek re-runs __ Fortune cookies __ Ann Landers __ Psychic Friends Network __ Dianetics __ Playboy and/or Playgirl __ Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll __ Biorhythms __ EST __ Television __ Mantras __ Jimmy Swaggart __ Crystals (not including Crystal Gayle) __ Human Sacrifice __ Wandering around in desert __ Burning shrubbery __ Other:_____________________ 6. Have you ever worshiped a false God before? Is so, which false God were you fooled by? Please check all that apply. ___ Odin ___ Cthulhu ___ Lottery ___ Baal ___ Beelzebub ___ The Almighty Dollar ___ Mick Jagger ___ Bill Gates ___ The Great Pumpkin ___ Bill Clinton ___ A burning cabbage ___ mushrooms ___ socialism ___ Other: ________________ 7. God employs a limited degree of Divine Intervention to preserve the balanced level of felt presence and blind faith. Which would you prefer...(circle one)? a. More Divine Intervention b. Less Divine Intervention c. Current level of Divine Intervention is just right d. Don't know - what's Divine Intervention? 8. God also attempts to maintain a balanced level of disasters and miracles. Please rate on a scale of 1 to 5 God's handling of the following: (1 unsatisfactory, 5 excellent): Disaster: 1 2 3 4 5 flood 1 2 3 4 5 famine 1 2 3 4 5 earthquake 1 2 3 4 5 war 1 2 3 4 5 pestilence 1 2 3 4 5 plague 1 2 3 4 5 AOL 1 2 3 4 5 France 1 2 3 4 5 Jerry Lewis 1 2 3 4 5 Hollywood loud-mouths 1 2 3 4 5 my last relationship 1 2 3 4 5 Democratic presidential candidates > >>Miracles: 1 2 3 4 5 rescues 1 2 3 4 5 spontaneous remissions 1 2 3 4 5 crying statues 1 2 3 4 5 water changing to wine 1 2 3 4 5 walking on water 1 2 3 4 5 stars hovering over towns 1 2 3 4 5 VCRs that set their own clocks 1 2 3 4 5 my present relationship 9. Please rate the following on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 unsatisfactory, 5 excellent): 1 2 3 4 5 God's Courtesy 1 2 3 4 5 answers to your prayers 1 2 3 4 5 Are your spiritual needs being met? 1 2 3 4 5 How are your shrubs doing? 10. Do you have any additional comments or suggestions for improving the quality of God's services? (Attach an additional sheet(s) if necessary.) Read Thief Of time today. Good, but not as funny as the other Disc World books. One week till the Mammoth Cave and Tennessee trip! We've had one change of plans. Instead of flying back, Mother, ALL HER CATS, Donald and I are driving down. Mom want's to stop off in Baton Rouge to pick up yet another bengal. I hope those cats produce highly salable kittens. Otherwise, she's just a crazy lady with a house overflowing with very expensive cats.
In the oh WOW department.... Iraqi man hid 22 years in a wall Hussein foe holed up in secret compartment By Daniel Williams THE WASHINGTON POST SHAMMAR, Iraq � For 22 years, Jawad Amer Sayed was a dead man. HE WAS on the run from Saddam Hussein�s police in 1981, and instead of fleeing into exile, he decided to stay at home and hide. Inside a false wall he built between two rooms. For as long as it would take. It took 22 years. But on April 10, the day after Hussein fell from power, Sayed emerged from his hideaway to the amazement of relatives and friends. Only his mother, younger brother and two sisters knew from the beginning what had happened to him. An aunt learned later by mistake but had kept quiet. Everybody else thought he was dead. Sometimes, so did he. �Most of the time, it was very, very quiet. I think only death could be so quiet,� he said while holding court with visitors and admirers one recent day. WELL-KNOWN STORY It seems like everybody in Iraq knows Sayed�s story. It reached Baghdad by way of the relative of a television reporter who interviewed him. Newspapers ran with the tale. Iraqis argued about his feat over coffee and tea. Young people questioned whether anyone could � or would want to � hide for so long. They�d rather die, some said. Older people expressed less skepticism � they wondered why more Iraqis didn�t think of doing what he had done. Sayed said he went outside his homemade tomb only twice � to rebuild and repair the chamber. �The last time I saw him, he was taller than me,� said Kamel Khalef, a neighbor who stands about 5 feet 8. Sayed embraced Khalef and came up only to his nose. Sayed�s face is all cheekbone and beard. He lost his teeth, and stores them in a matchbox. �They fell one by one. I kept them to remember the time I spent. Look at this molar. This one was 1990,� he said. It is a testament to the fear instilled by Hussein that Sayed came up with a solution that condemned himself to solitary confinement. He said he was a follower of the Dawa party, a Shiite Muslim group that battled Hussein for decades and has recently, like Sayed himself, emerged into the light of day. Secret police arrested two of his friends and they were executed. �I saw their names on a list of the executed. I thought up this idea. I built the wall in one night,� he said. A PERSONALIZED LIVING SPACE Before going in, he buried Dawa books and pamphlets beneath the floor of another room. After emerging at the end of his imprisonment, he dug them out, too. Sayed lives about 100 miles southeast of Baghdad in a village of flat-roofed farmhouses scattered among date palms, sand and marshes. The chamber where he says he spent almost all his adult life � he is 49 � measures a yard wide by about seven feet long. To enter, he must negotiate a trap door barely wide enough for a slender person to squeeze through. Inside, Sayed fashioned a terraced living space from dirt he excavated when digging a well � it is located at one end of the compartment. At the other, there�s a toilet, placed somewhat higher. In between, he built a dirt platform to sit on. The lowest point is the space where he could stand and even bathe. A vent lets in air from the roof and a pipe drains water outside. A peephole no bigger than a finger�s diameter was Sayed�s window on the world. All he could see was the inner courtyard of his farmhouse and now not even that is visible. A date palm grew up to obscure the view. �I witnessed my brother�s wedding from here,� he said. �I didn�t dare go out to celebrate.� On one wall, he hung the necessities of his monastic life: a light bulb, for when there was electricity, a kerosene lamp, for when there was not; paintbrushes of various sizes to dust himself off; a toothbrush, which has not been useful for some time; an electric hot plate where he prepared rice and beans; and a small shelf that holds a Koran and a book of Dawa politics. His mother fed him fruit and vegetables through the trap door. He washed his gray cotton robe himself. He continued wearing it after his exit � it has a faded, patchy look. CLOSE CALLS In the early years, police twice came looking for him, he said. Once, a policeman entered the adjoining room at night when everyone was asleep, rummaging about the bed that was placed over the trap door. Sayed�s mother, Aziza Masikh Dahash, awoke and screamed, and a neighbor rushed over firing a shotgun. The officer fled. Sayed�s mother also headed off two construction projects she feared would bring down the tomb around her son�s head. She once threw herself in front of a backhoe a neighbor was using to build a cesspool near the hidden compartment. �They thought I was crazy,� she said. In-laws were not let in on the secret. In Iraqi society, only blood relatives are fully trusted with deep family secrets. Once, a 13-year-old cousin of Sayed�s wandered into the house, rolled around under the bed and discovered the trap door. He crawled in, spied Sayed and ran to tell his mother, who guessed that it was her nephew and swore the boy to silence. She never told even her sister, Sayed�s mother, of the discovery. In 1998, one of Sayed�s sisters began to suffer delusional mental illness and talk about him and his wall. They sent her to live with relatives, lest she accidentally spill the story. PASSING TIME �I enjoy sleeping outside now. Looking at the stars. But, sometimes, I like to go into the wall. It is my second home. Maybe it is my first. I will leave it like it is.� � JAWAD AMER SAYED When asked how he could stand being alone, Sayed answered that he was not. Allah was in there with him, he said. �The Koran teaches that Allah is the companion of anyone who believes,� he said. He has practically memorized the Muslim holy book. When a recent visitor tried to recite some verses, Sayed quickly corrected him. He passed the time practicing calligraphy and kept abreast of current events via a small battery-operated radio. Arabic-language reports from the British Broadcasting Corporation were his favorite source of information. During the U.S.-led war, he heard the bombing � his home is near an air base and ammunition depot. The dirt road from the main highway is now littered with abandoned antiaircraft guns. When he emerged from behind the wall, he put on old sunglasses his mother had kept. He had trouble walking. Visitors have come from miles around, including strangers who want to hear his tale. He jots down the name of each visitor in a guest book. His mother tells one and all how his emergence was like �giving birth a second time.� Sayed wants to work � he studied management in Baghdad before going into hiding. He�s thinking of marriage. �It depends on my health,� he said. �I enjoy sleeping outside now. Looking at the stars. But, sometimes, I like to go into the wall. It is my second home. Maybe it is my first. I will leave it like it is.�
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2003-06-17 |
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