If you're a journey fan, then there's no way to explain this.  Just watch it and then google like mad.  And yes, that is the REAL journey.

YouTube – JOURNEY on Ellen De Generes Show – "Faithfully"

Somehow, and I'm not sure how, I ended up reading this article about the removal of the ban on selling foie gras in Chicago. I found it interesting, because I didn't really know what foie gras was or why it would be illegal in Chicago. The article pretty much explained all that. Foie Gras is duck liver from ducks who are force-fed so their livers get really fatty and tasty. Apparently this offends some animal rights Activists.

I know that usually you would expect me to chide animal rights activists or something like that, and the article was written in a very "pro eating foie gras" stance, like it's not really that big of a deal so, "come on!"…

…but force feeding ducks through a tube so their livers can get unnaturally fatty and then people with money can eat them?

That just seems crazy. Maybe I'm missing something, and I don't really like ducks that much, but I'm gonna take their side on this one.

No more foie gras for me.

I find it interesting, of course, that now that I have plenty of free time to write whatever I want, I don't have anything to write about. This must change, and it must change. To quote the words of my pastor here,

"Danny, we must see this change. It must change Danny and we must do it!"

That could basically be implied to any situation. I'm really just pointing out that he likes to call me Danny and use the word "must".

Now. Let me make one thing clear:

You do not call me Danny. Nobody calls me that. Even my own father doesn't call me Danny. In general, I don't like it, and if you call me Danny and think you're being coy, I'll say something once or twice, and then secretly dislike you in my thoughts. Plus when it comes time for fun pranks, you'll be at the top of my list.

My pastor has somehow gotten around this, and my Mom, Aunts, and Grandma. So you need to be a small Mexican woman or a very confident South African; otherwise I think you should stick with Dan or Dan Ray. And it's fine. We're good.

Also:

Whistling:

Me and colleague Crystal are arguing about my facebook status, which says, "Dan just noticed that walking around the hallways whistling the "death star" theme evokes funny responses." I thought that was pretty funny, Crystal says I'm strange and that whistling is strange, especially whistling star wars. Lame.

Lame:

It occurs to me that lame is a great word to use to silence somebody or end an argument. I mean really, what can you say against lame? "Not lame?" Well that's lame too. How you say it makes all the difference, but if you just inflect it properly, nobody can come back from it. Try it. Try it on your kids…

Mom I don't wanna go to bed!

Go to bed!

No! I don't want to!

Why not?

Cause I want to stay up and watch more tv!

Lame…

Kid will be sleeping inside of 10 minutes, I guarantee. Some may disagree. Lame.

Construction:

The nice construction people at my work have decided that from about 8:30am to 4:30pm would be the perfect time to start drilling into the wall right next to my cubicle (and everyone else's) with a 40-foot-tall drilling machine. During this time I have:

• heard several people complain
  
• watched the Dean of the Business School run around frantically trying to get the construction workers to stop drilling with their 40-foot-tall drilling machine
  
• found out just how wonderful in-ear noise cancelling headphones truly are
  
• eaten a lot of bagels from solly's, with solly's fresh-made cream cheese, and
  
• asked several people over email, "hey do you hear a noise or anything? Is it raining outside?
  

Seriously though. It's really loud. Imagine if you took the biggest metal mixing bowl in your house, put it on your head, and then somebody stood on a chair behind you with a pair of chopsticks and a wooden spoon and they played drums on the bowl rapidly while screaming "African Drum Solo!" It's that loud.

Other Stuff:

• Bought a new (cheap used) bike. Giant size. Since I'm a giant. Anybody need a morning cycling partner? I'm thinking 5-10k rides.
  
• I've decided to learn how to play the djembe drum. My instructor will be youtube.
  
• I've been sending about 20-30 emails a day outside of my job. Why?
  
• I need a vacation. Anyone got any good ideas (trips to see family and friends in California don't really count as a "vacation")?
  
• I'm getting a lot of flak for not wearing a bike helmet. Including – but not limited to – obnoxious Canadian men coming up next to me in their cars and giving me a hard time about it. Do you think that's fair? I don't think it's fair.
  

- DK

I've noticed recently that, as every good Christian boy should, I have a lot of swear word substitutions that I use; meaning that when I would normally swear I use some other combination of words in the place of an actual swear word.

I don't really have a problem with people who swear – I mean people who swear often and inappropriately are a bit rediculous – but in general swearing doesn't really bother me that much. If you want to drop an occasional F-Bomb to be funny or when you're really mad that's fine.

At some point I just stopped swearing and it wasn't really a moral choice, so much as I didn't really find a need to swear that often. I just really don't like the way it comes out or the reaction it elicits in others. Somehow that resulted in a lot of silly phrases that make me come off as a choir boy sometimes, even though I'm really not much of a choir boy.

Here are some of them…

Good Gravy – expressed irritation or tiredness of the same thing (i.e., my current allergies)
Holy Macaroni – this I say when something catches me off guard
F – used as a substitute for, well, F.
Shiester! – I think this may be a swear word in some other language.
Frak – Battle Star Galactica influence. Genius, they've basically created a whole new swear word that isn't a swear word. I try not to say this too often 'cause I don't want the world to know I'm a sci-fi Junkie.
Jeesh! – Express discontent at the actions of another.
Holy Schnizzle! – no idea where this came from.
Pickin' – see Frak
Blast! – Sh!^

Maybe you have some?

DK

All's Quiet on the Northwestern Front

This is one of those weeks where all in my world seems to be filled with peace and free of trouble. Maybe I'm just feeling sentimental, maybe I'm on drugs. I'm not sure.

Top of the good news is that Jane and Dane are finally home with Ben and officially "out of the woods." Now I can go meet Ben and get my picture taken with him, and the baby montage will be complete and ready for posting.

I had a cold all weekend which stunk, but somehow the weekend was still able to be filled with fun and frolick. I also somehow managed to meet a bunch of new people, hang out with old friends, and even hang out with a really old (chico) friend who was in town visiting. That last one was my friend Meg Wolf who is visiting Vancouver from Southern California (northern mexico), but she'd get shy if I mentioned her name, so we'll just keep that between you and I.

In my leisure (being sick) time, I've been reading books that are far too complicated for me to understand and watching old episodes of Star Trek – DS9. This, combined with a foggy head from a stuffed up nasal passages makes for some pretty interesting dreams. Think commander Worf on the Bridge of the Defiant travelling through time while speculating on the extent to which Christological events may be efficable on our eternal redemption.

If Worf was a preacher, I would totally go to that church.

I had good conversations at Fun City. This is nothing new. But particularly Lynsey and I got into a couple of topics that I think are pretty interesting and crucial (apologetics – blogging about it now). Fun City's pretty much the greatest. The difference between my house and the Friends house is that none of us sleep with each other and Friends is lame.

Other than that and the fact that every conversation last week and this weekend were about the white people blog, that's pretty much it. Oh yeah, TAL was good this week, as always.

DK

I think maybe I've already complained on this blog about the whole coffee shops never fill up my coffee thing on this blog. So sorry but I have to complain about it again.

Because I seriously end up thinking about this every single time I go for a coffee.

Now let me make some things clear.

First off I like by. Coffee black. Completely black. No sugar, no cream – none whatsoever. This means that I don't need any room for cream. Where I came from this didn't really seem to be too uncommon. In fact, I remember when I was younger I used to work on restaurants and we were instructed to ask customers when they ordered coffee if they would like it black so that we didn't waste the little cream and sugar packets if they didn't want them. Apparently in BC nobody drinks their coffee black because whenever I tell people that I drink it black they just look at me funny. Like really? Ok, well do you want to put some cream in your black coffee though?

Seriously? Really?

Hence whenever you order coffee here they fill it about two thirds full and hand it to you smiling as of they gave you some poo In a box for your Christmas present but they knew you'd be long gone before you figured it out and cursed at them under your breath.

And so they never fill your coffee. And the thing is i really like their coffee. I mean its not like I'm such a caffeine addict that I'm really happy about having to go pay a solid $2 for a cup of brew when I could make it for free at home (and I like me the coffee I make at home). When I show up at your coffee establishment, it's because dang it I want your coffee.

So when I drive halfway across town to to to jj bean (the best coffee) I'm really hoping to get that full cup. Why can't they take that as a compliment?

…at this point you're probably asking yourself the question, "Man why can't the guy just ask them for a full cup of coffee. I'm sure they'll oblige."

Well Mr. or Mrs. Smarty Pants maybe you wouldn't mind telling me the freaking magic word then.

Because no matter what I say my cup always comes back half empty, i.e.,

This always leaves me in the awkward position of having to ask the coffee person to go back and fill it up the rest of the way. You can imagine how hard it is to phrase that one without sounding like a petty spendthrift. I'm thinking of starting to say, "Listen, just give me a coffee, the whole damn coffee."

Advice? I really hope this isn't making me sound like a cranky old man…

DK

p.s. sorry about the grammar errors, I wrote this on the iphone in the coffee shop

Eventually you begin to associate the weather to your inner being, as if you could feel the process of "freezing" taking place on it's most sub-atomic level, going even beyond your physiology to your thoughts and emotions. Whatever freezing is, it slowly encapsulates your whole being, shutting you down. Freezing is kind of like the beginning of dying.

Three. The sun is a precious gift. I think there are a lot of people in the world who take the presence of the giant gas ball in the sky for granted. Having lived in two sun deprived cities, it doesn't surprise me anymore that so many people throughout history have tried to worship the sun. When one lives in a oft-cloudy city like those in the pacific northwest, a day where the sun looks to peek out is a completely different experience than otherwise. On the one hand, a normal, cloudy, dreary, and shutter-shutting cold day is like waking up and expecting that, at best, you're going to be given a meal, some light torture, and maybe some chalk or a sharp rock to express some morbid creativity on the wall of your light-less cell in the musty prison into which you incarcerated yourself when you moved this far north. On the other hand, a sunny day is like…

...a sunny day. It's just that good.

I for one welcome our non-sentient helium overlords

DK

http://www.linein.org/media/screenclean

This handy little app will find the dirty parts of your computer monitor and clean it from the inside out. Uses "new" and "2.0" technology. Very handy. I've been using it for about 10 minutes and my monitor is almost clean. Works best in full screen (obviously).

DK

Some thoughts:

Is Baseball Really Boring?

As the ALCS wraps up I really don't think so. Maybe it is, in the sense that fishing is boring to people who don't fish (I don't fish). But for those who do it's exhilarating. So is baseball. I was watching the game a bit earlier today when that chubby pitcher was going after big poppy, and I gotta say that every pitch is insanely tense. It's the ultimate faceoff. Mano a mano. Sure, nothing is actually happening for a great deal of the time, but it builds up to the moment and you can't take your eyes off the screen. I'm still not willing to call it a sport, but I certainly don't think that I agree it's boring. Of course the Basketball season starts in like -3 days, and I'm pretty sure I won't talk about baseball again until next October.

Are you Photogenic?

...And proud of it? I'm not. I don't think I am. I've never liked pictures of my self. Look for a blog about this in the near future, one of my friends and I are having a discussion on this. I have some theories. Preliminary thoughts are welcome.

I'm Going to a Prom, I think

Yep. This Saturday, with a couple of lovely ladies, I might add (note to self, too much use of the word "lovely" in one blog post). I'm not sure how this happened, but Saturday night I'm pretty sure I'm getting all suited up and heading out to a Prom for adults. I'm not sure what's going to happen there, but I sure hope they play November Rain.

Get Yer Facebook on.

Seriously. At this point you're missing out. Like literally. You have some friends and they had a great party but they didn't invite you because you're not on facebook. It hurts, I know, but the solution is simple. Much more simple than the solution to my misguided grammatical approach. "Like Literally?" C'mon, that's not a sentence.

That's right, the Suburban Refugee is back, but now he's the World Wide Refugee or something. Just like Randy Johnson at the bottom of the 8th, right when I was about to space out and stop blogging forever, SBR is back to finish the day. Whohoo. But I guess all that R.I.P. stuff and the enless tears and the shrieking and the counselling were a waste of time. Dude sure knows how to play with a guy's emotions.

Anyway, Now you don't have to be bored anymore. I'll throw up a feed for the right column as soon as I have time.