maybe i'm loopy from boredom, but i just found this comment on polipundit.com to be very funny:

There is a really sad article on Hobbs Online about Kerry today. According to the article, no one has liked Kerry his entire life.
Julie | 06.08.04 - 8:48 am | #

can you imagine no one ever liking you your ENTIRE life? not even your parents, or friends, or dog, or barber? it's the saddest thing i've ever heard. poor kerry.

good lord. somebody, somewhere, give me something to do. i can say that i have officially performed about five minutes of work today. i have asked if there's more for me to do (there is not). i have checked every blog that i read about 32 times. (not surprisingly, people are not posting fast enough to satisfy me.) i have gone downstairs to the vending machine to buy a diet dr. pepper. i came back upstairs to drink the diet dr. pepper. it was tasty, but did not make me less bored. i walked around a little bit outside, past the cvs, and discovered that is is very humid. a homeless man said something to me under his breath, no doubt something very lewd, but i was so bored that i couldn't muster up the energy to kick his ass. i have thought about a million and two subjects i could do a blog post on, but none of them have inspired me to actually write anything. i have about three more hours until i can escape from the office and go run five miles, which in itself is a mind-numbing activity, but i am looking forward to it, because it will certainly be less boring than what i'm doing right now. which is nothing, by the way. i have nothing to do. hence boredom.

does anybody else get friday off? exciting ideas to pass the three-day weekend? i have an exciting opportunity. not. my ex-boyfriend is coming to town and wants to hang out. though i hold little ill-will towards him (well, that might be a lie), i just can't imagine hanging out with him will be the best way to pass an evening. maybe i'm being too harsh. i tried to assuage some boredom by googling him, given that i don't know what he's been up to in the past three and a half years since i dumped him for tommy, but i didn't find much. actually, that's also kind of a lie. i found a few things, but in the occurrence that he might read this (given his history of stalking me on the internet), i'd rather not play petty. though it might be too late for that. i will say: i found out his nickname is apparently "wilco", and that is just so wrong on so many levels.

I was heartened to see this story being carrier by the AP this morning. Some consumers are filing a lawsuit against cellphone carriers opposing the practice of "locking" phones -- preventing phones bought from carrier A from working with carrier B's network. It's true that there are two incompatible, competing cell technologies in the US -- CDMA and the international standard GSM -- but there's no technical reason why your CDMA phone can't work with any other CDMA carrier, and likewise with GSM (in most cases, anyway -- the actual details of GSM can occasionally make this complicated).

Why do companies lock phones? Simple: they subsidize the purchase of your handset, and they don't want to have to eat the cost when you go to a different carrier. At least, that's the conventional wisdom. But it's not true.

is that it's really a haven for terrorists. especially milan, for some reason.

Italy Arrests Suspected Madrid Bombing 'Mastermind'
...
So far, 20 people have been accused of involvement in the Madrid bombings. Fourteen of them are under arrest, while at least 20 others have been arrested and cleared.

Another Italian newspaper, La Repubblica, said three or four men had been arrested in raids in three northern Italian towns including Milan and they had planned an attack in Italy.

Italy has long been seen as a target for militant Islamic groups after its support for the U.S.-led campaign in Iraq and it has stepped up security since the Madrid bombs.

Italian police have made several arrests, mainly in the north, since September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

when i was there last year, a lot of teachers at the school would joke about via ripamonti (the main highway connecting our suburb to the city center) being a muslim terrorist alley. i always thought they were just being kind of racist, but there was probably some truth to it.

i still have a lot of friends at asm, and all the lovely kids i taught last year, and i hope the school will suck it up and step up security, because since they're the only american school in milan and all, i wouldn't be surprised if they had been considered as a target. dismissal time, at 3:30pm, is actually a terrorist's dream; it's incredibly disorganized, with rich milanese parents running around and teachers sheparding out the kids (some of whom are offspring of politicians). i'm probably just being paranoid (something i do well), but i hope they keep safe.