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Need proof? Here ya go:
Some highlights:
"Scientology is a religion because it's been proven in court."
"L. Ron Hubbard exposed the governments attempted mind control program."
And that's nothing, watch the video which is an actual Scientology orientation video.
I watched with amusement this morning Wolf Blitzer interviewing some high ranking Iraqi government official, and sorry, but his title escapes me. He was pretty high up the food chain, in any case. The funny thing about it was that Blitzer kept trying to put a negative spin on al-Zarqawi's death but the official just wouldn't fall for it, and as a matter of fact seemed a bit confused by Blitzer's line of questioning.
Blitzer concentrated on the question of whether women and children were killed during the bombing. The official said that one or more women were killed, but they were associates of al-Zarqawi, and that one child had been killed and that was unfortunate. He tried to stress the fact that the Iraqi government acquired a ton of intelligence via this operation through journals and computer files, but Blitzer virtually shrugged that news off to go on and talk about the threat of increased attacks. The official basically said in a diplomatic way "Listen, we've got these guys on the run, we killed their leader in Iraq and we have a ton of leads, got that?"
You'd think that the killing of al-Zarqawi would be reported as a GOOD thing, but no... immediately news programs are latching on to the theory that this will only increase Al-Qaeda's resolve and that someone even worse will step in to fill that vacuum and that even more attacks will be the consequence and blah, blah, blah. God forbid that we get ANY credit for accomplishing the HUGE task of killing the number two man in Al-Queda, eh? Oh, yeah, the other bit I heard was "Well, we still don't have Osama."
I've decided I have to laugh at coverage like this, otherwise I'll just burst a blood vessel getting angry about it.
It occurs to me that I don't have to always rant about something socially/culturally significant... I mean this is MY blog, right? :-)
Anyway, I'm travelling for business right now, the proverbial "on the road" and I've forgotten how much fun it's NOT. I've taken on a position that requires travel one week out of every month doing appraisals of high end homes for insurance companies and it's not all as rosey as it sounds.
At least not when you're starting out with no real estate background and completely green.
It's pretty grueling, doing 5 or so appointments a day with each one taking me (right now) about 1 1/2 hours (I should get that down to about 20 minutes after a few months of experience) and the drive time between appointments. I have to measure the outside perimeter of homes in addition to interior surveying and it's no fun out in the sun in business clothes, measuring and drawing the perimeter of a 6,000 SF house.
Yeah, I know, lousy attitude. Really I enjoy seeing the homes and meeting the owners, especially after years of having almost exclusively online friends. It's more the travel and grueling schedule (not to mention the reports I haven't started writing yet) that makes this less than pleasant. I miss my home, my wife and daughter.
This is as close to corporate as I've come in the last 5 years... been self-employed on my on schedule for so long that I'd forgotten the stress level that comes with being responsible to someone else. I'm sure I'll adjust after a few trips, but right now, man oh man...!
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