Today is an mbare.org first! Newly hired (or was she enslaved? I just don't know) photoreporter Erin "Red Tails" Cechal has submitted images of old, [not so] washed up Madison Hippies camped out on State Street. Well she made a fool of herself running after the wrong bus to get to the location. Hah!!! Also in her haste, she forgot her warm mittens and the cold Wisconsin Dairy Air (Or is it Derriere?) I never said we employ/enslave talented people. Erin even regularly calls me a laundry list of neat things: cold, indecisive, Gap Baby, heartless, capitalistic... If you'd like to be a reporter for mbare.org, send me an email (m@mbare.org) or send me an IM (BareUwm)!

Anyway, here is Red Tale Volume 1, by Erin "Red Tails" Cechal (She has red hair, y'know!):

I asked the guy in the beaverskin hat how long they planned on continuing the refugee camp, but because I'm not a good reporter I can't remember if he said the 5th or the 15th. The 5th would make sense because that's the day of the International Student Strike taking place here at 11am in front of Bascom Hall, but the 15th would also make sense because that would be exactly a month.

I also asked beaverskin man if they had gotten hassled at all by the police, and he said they were told they needed to replace any of their makeshift tarp tents with real, fire proof ones.

Beaverskin man also told me he's only been away from the camp once for a couple of hours to take a shower. The whole time I talked to him a guy was banging on drum behind him.

From the pamphlet table I took a postcard to send to Herb Kohl declaring that I am against war and Iraq and support HJCon 20 ( Which I didn't even know existed until today).

To view all of the photos, click here!

Ahh those guys are so funny. Thanks and Great work, Erin! Its too bad you told me last night, "I'm never taking anymore pictures for you god damnit." :( Anybody know what HJCON 20 is? I need to go do other things. Read Lucretius etc... Blech.

Peace!!!!

There's new pictures up of our walk through the snow today. Make sure you click both pictures!

Well, there is 12+ inches on the ground at the moment, here in the D.C. suburbs. It is steadily snowing at a rate of an inch an hour or so. Maybe I won't do my homework today. :) Click the pictures to see the full size image!

Valentine's Day is tomorrow, folks! Are you prepared to give that gift to your special someone? If not, mbare.org has some gift ideas for you!

Gifts For Her:
What better way to say, "I love you, honey," than with this Philips Magnavox Video RF Modulator. Your love can view all of her video in normal VHF TV signals.

How about $179 worth of roses?

Is she a music lover? Get her this CD! "Creepin Thru Da Hoodz" by the Junk Yard Band.

Gifts for him:
A new shirt?

Your love can make his one car garage into a two car garage with this 12,000lb. two post automobile lift. Put one car right under the other!

Is he literate? How about this book?

I wrote a scene, for my class, "Comm. 105: Visual Literacy," for the Charlie Chaplin movie, "Modern Times." If this scene were included in a more recent version of “Modern Times,” it would certainly invoke a very general critique of computer technology. It highlights the fact that a very large amount of the worldwide web’s site hit counts are pornography related. It gives a good example of a common chat room question. The question could be seen as a possible scary aspect of computer literacy and the arrogance of some users. Computer illiteracy is also shown by Charlie’s pointing and gesturing antics, as well as his use of the mouse as a microphone. A good followup scene could show Charlie trying to use a cell phone. The entire film could try to make comic sense of the new world of communications using Charlie’s nonverbal ways and show how difficult it is to learn to use new and invasive technology. Its pretty lame. Click "More" to read the short scene. Comments welcome, as always. :) PEACE!!!

The Tramp (Chaplin) waddles into a room with only a desk, a chair on wheels and a computer sitting on top of the desk. He plops himself onto the edge of the chair and the chair rolls out from under him and into the wall behind him. A subtle “BOOP” sound is heard as he lands on the floor. Stunned and rubbing his sore rear. He retrieves the chair, sits, and the chair comes out from underneath him again. He again retrieves the chair. He successfully sits and stares fixedly at the computer monitor. His eyes are met with a still picture of a scantily clad, smiling woman.
The Tramp first smiles at the woman. She continues to smile. He scratches his forehead and reaches, with his finger, to touch her arm. When his finger meets the monitor, he snaps back, having gotten a shock. A loud ZAP is heard. He shakes his finger several times and looks angrily at the woman. The Tramp reaches for the mouse and picks it up without moving his eyes. He holds the mouse, with the back close to his lips. A subtitle appears, “HELLO? HELLO? THAT HURT!” The woman continues to smile.
The Tramp walks away angrily, flailing his arms. A sound resembling a church bell comes from the computer. He stops, scratches his forehead, pivots on one foot, while the other leg swings around high above the ground. Facing the computer now, e marches to it. He again sits on the edge of the desk and falls on the floor as the chair rolls out from under him. A screen has appeared over half of the woman which reads, “Age? Sex? Location?” His eyebrows go up and his eyes get big. A tighter shot of just “Age?” is shown. He points at his left hand with his right. His left hand flashes four fingers, and then 2 fingers. A tight shot of “Sex?” is shown. The Tramp smiles and nods excitedly. A tight shot of “Location?” is shown. He again looks confused. He simply points at the ground next to him.
A few seconds pass and a new line appears on the monitor, “FINE! Don’t talk to me. Bye.” The Tramp gets a confused but saddened look on his face. He shrugs and waddles out of the room.

By popular demand, (well, just Melissa really) a picture of me with my niece has been taken. Thanks Joanna! :) Comments on the hair are welcome. Its doing a fine job of growing. Comments on the ibook, well - as long as you don't hurt its feelings, are ok. It reads everything I read, you know...

Oh! Check out all the new comments in the Liana galleries (click on the pictures with a red asterick and scroll to the bottom)!

I updated the gallery at the request of Grandma Bare. There's some new nice photos of my neice Liana. Aww.. How cute.

I was inspired (I also want to know why the hell the bird has a sausage, any ideas?) this afternoon to try and figure out the correct verb to describe a bird removing its own feathers/plumage... Here are some possibilities:
Deplumage, Exfeatherate, Displumate, Explumate

So I did some research, before running to those creepy folks (my word he is scary) at AU's English Language Institue and found the correct answers:
Displume, Deplume, Deplumate

Ahhhh, its all in good feather (which also, oddly, is an idiom for humor). This is all part of my JLB inspired project to learn to read.

I found the location of my birthdate in Pi. That's kinda nifty. 199,112 digits into the thing. Not too shabby.

In other nerd news, students back in 1995 at Rice University actually tested the properties of Twinkies! Genius! My personal favorite, the Tuture Test:

"The first time, our subject was a Lovett freshman, but after two questions we discovered that he had eaten his subject counterpart..."

LOL. Oh God, must keep reading this.

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I guess the Greeks weren't ALL that crazy. Scientists in Crete recently unearthed the skull of a 7 million year old ancestor of the one-eyed Odysseus chasing Cyclops. Exciting. Roar.

My day is complete. Proof that liberals live in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. This was actually printed in the Herald Times Reporter. Conservative Commandments. Haha. Amazing.

I had to dig around to find something I saved from mid-January which I picked out of the pocket of a plane from Milwaukee to DC. There is a letter to the editor on Page 10A of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel from Saturday, January 11, 2003 which read:

MEDIA: Ignore Problems and They'll Disappear

Please stop covering crime at
Mayfair Mall. The media are
creating all the problems by re-
porting them.

Also, please refrain from
mentioning: terrorism, war
with Iraq, weapons of mass
destruction, North Korea and con-
flict in the Middle East.

Only when these problems are
ignored by the media will they
go away.

-Christine Adams, West Bend

AHAHA.. haha... ahhhahaha.. ahh... Just reading it again makes me go into hysterics. Boy am I glad I saved that.