'tis a good day for secular humanism!

DOVER, Pa. -- In a school board fight that focused on intelligent design, voters in Dover kicked out all eight incumbents, each of whom supported the district's current ID policy.

A group of Democratic challengers calling themselves Dover CARES were elected. They said they are not against intelligent design, but that they are against including it in the science department.

"We couldn't be any happier. We were just hoping to maybe get a majority and to get all eight seats is just unbelievable," said Terry Emig of Dover CARES.

The outgoing school board voted last year to include an intelligent design preamble in 9th-grade biology classes before students learned lessons on evolution. That decision prompted a lawsuit by a group of eight parents, which was recently argued in federal court.

The election will not have any effect on the trial, which is now being deliberated by U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III. He expects to rule by January. The winners of the school board race will be sworn in on Dec. 5.


and in other news, a kitty in arizona survives swallowing a 3 inch cordless phone antennea.





a very good day indeed.

i fly to vegas in 18 hours with my new lovely bride. that's right, me on a plane. the things we do for those we love...

well, i'm scared as all hell, but hey no work for a week. and assuming there is some terrorist attack planned for the start day of my honeymoon, or some tragicaly ironic mantinence failure like that one in '96, i'll be sipping kaluha and catching up on old times with monica in the afterlife.

now to go pack and take the nerve medication.

so i'll be married in eleven days. i'm ready for it completely. i just want all the planning and preparing to be overwith. i need to get back to a normal life.

soon enough.

9 years ago today i lost a friend. it was summer, i was up late channel surfing when i saw a story on the news that a plane had exploded off the coast of new york.

it was twa flight 800 and my friend monica cox was on it. she and a group of people from the school in mountoursville where she had moved were on their way to france.

she was one of the kindest people i had ever known and her life was cut tragically short.

tonight i play suede's "the next life" for her.

sleep well monica, you're missed and never forgotten.

flight 800 passenger list
Monica Cox, 16, who grew up in York, Pa., had moved to Montoursville at the beginning of the last school year. Monica, who was going into 11th grade, was an excellent French and Spanish language student who school officials said was concerned with social and environmental issues. She liked to write poetry and was an accomplished softball player and bowler. Monica was a member of the French Club.

so today was my lovely fiancee angie's birthday. we woke up around 8:30 this morning, which for us was a whole lot of needed sleeping in. after smoking a cigarette and downing the caffine, i handed her presents to her. after the paper was taken off, smiles abounded...setting the tone for the day.

from me she got an ipod shuffle complete with a waterproof case on a neck string. perfect for the gym or work. also "Wonderfalls" the complete series on dvd.

after messing with the computer and getting the pod set up, we got our things together and went out to Harrigans for the sunday brunch. we serve too much food on that thing, not to mention that i don't eat....save donuts and faux beer. so she got the buffet while i had my partner Rhon grill me a steak that also served as my dinner and will be finished off in the morning as breakfast.

our server as always on my days off was my best friend and groomsmaid Kate. outstanding service as always and top quality food. Kate and Rhon...you guys are amazing. so if any of you yorkers read this and want to come in and have me make breakfast for you, by all means go ahead. i'll be happy to and it will be the best you ever had. just remember to tip my girl. she works very hard for the money.

after all that, it was off to our friend Heather's house. Heather is Ang's maid of honor and was also my junior year prom date. we met up with her and her fiancee Shawn to go play mini golf.

there was much discussion over why one would wear low rise underwear with low rise pants. it was agreed that it's to prevent the underpants (or UP's) from showing. Heather however was all the day with the crack of her ass showing. the v neck shirt and no bra combo also lent to a non kid friendly mini golf experience.

if nothing else, i suppose this day halfway made up for being shafted out of all the teenage drama that went on years earlier. oh and team ben/ang won the golf.

after that we stopped back at the holiday again to see sis on her fist sunday as afternoon bartender. we talked to her for a while venting frustration over the fact that we will be moving into the house august 18th at the earliest.

leaving there it was time to go home. pick up some porn and go home. that ended up taking another hour, as i was told that i'm never quite as particular and methodical as when browsing pornography. turns out all that time wasn't really worth it. it was bad. more like an audition for a porn than an actual film. next time i'll remember to stick with something from larry flynt productions.

anyway, a good day was had by all... i hope yours went well also.

4 days off in the last 6 days. i hate not having a set schedule. i mean it is nice after working a week and a half straight, but jesus, i'm really not looking forward to going in tomorrow. i'm sure i'll get another long ass stretch before my next day of lesiure. such is the price to pay for getting a new job with health insurance. oh well.


check out the new kaki king album "legs to make us longer". it's really good.

26.

so back in 1979 on the day i was born, it was a friday the 13th. not just friday the 13th, but good friday the 13th. anniversary of the day they strung jesus up on the cross. yep, some crazy dark star i was born under.

anyway, happy birthday to me...

here's a picture of the beautiful and talented radha mitchell to make me smile because birthday or not, i have to be at work in an hour.

hells yes. the album isn't quite finished yet, as far as i know anyway, but the anderson/butler reunion project "the tears" have shot this video.

i'm happy now. a new job that provides insurance, starting over new with a few old friends after bad endings, and now brett and bernard about to put out new music. happy times indeed.

ok, so i used to do drugs. i did most every kind there was to be done, and copious amounts of whatever it was at the time. it just so happens that for a year and a half stretch, heroin was my bliss. i loved the horse, the junk, the scag, etc...

that said, while i enjoy the booze after work, and the occasional toke, as of today i am 6 years clean. i can remember the day i quit like it was yesterday. and i can remember the feeling of doing it even more.

however, this is what being an adult is all about. making choices to better myself and sticking to it. this is something that will always be with me, but with positive thought and self control, some day i'll hit 45 years clean.


hey, your sales pitch sounds really good, but you know, i think i'd rather not.

Those were the good mornings, when the sun was hot and the air was quick and promising, when the Real Businessseemed right on the verge of happening and i felt that if I went just a little faster I might overtake that bright and fleeting thing that was always just ahead.
Then came noon, and morning withered like a lost dream. The sweat was torture and the rest of the day was littered with the dead remains of all those things that might have happened, but couldn't stand the heat. When the sun got hot enough it burned away all the illusions and i saw the place as it was --cheap, sullen, and garish-- nothing good was going to happen here.
Sometimes at dusk, when you were tryingto relax and not think about the general stagnation, the Garbage God would gather a handful of those choked-off morning hopes and dangle them somewhere just out of reach; they would hang in the breeze and make a soundlike delicate glass bells, reminding you of something you never quite got hold of, and never would. It was a maddening image, and the only way to whip it was to hang on until dusk and banish the ghosts with rum. Often it was easier not to wait, so the drinking would begin at noon. It didn't help much, as I recall, except that sometimes it made the day go a little faster.

sleep well doc, you will be missed.