…finally.

I don’t know about you but I’m glad the elections in Iraq came off well. It’s nice to finally hear some good news from a place that has experienced so much misery over the past thirty years.

I know there are those amongst us (particularly Robert, who’s blog will be frothing and foaming about the “illegitimate” elections and lauding “the brave Iraqi freedom fighters” who’s only goal seems to be killing as many innocent Iraqis as possible) who are so blinded by their hatred of the Bush administration that they’ll be saddened by the apparent success of these elections. I hate this administration too, but not so much I want other people to suffer for the mistake this country has made in re-electing such a short-sighted and messianic president.

No, I hope something good for the Iraqi people comes out of these elections, despite the political boost the president will receive. The powerful images of Iraqi Arabs and Kurds lining up to vote despite the threat by Al-Queda to “spill voter blood” was a powerful one, much more for those in the Arab world who now may start demanding the same rights from their own corrupt leaders.

Right now I’m sitting on a conference call from home.

I’ve realized one becomes so innured to corporate jargon that you could basically record one of these meetings, cut out specific product information and insert a product your own company supports, creates or utilizes and you would have a ready-made sheet for corporate meetings.

Here’s an example:

1. We need to “drive a stake in the ground” for product xxx.
2. It’s important we finish this “high level summary” for the “executives” so they can understand “the issues” with product xxx.
3. Product xxx has been “pushed back” “pushed up” or “is on hold.”
4. Our company needs to “document” more.
5. We need to create an “action plan” for product or project xxx.
6. Let’s get together and “brainstorm” for “ideas” on product xxx.

Today was so beautiful in San Francisco. It was one of those days that makes you happy to live in California.

Yesterday I decided to get our back garden into shape. I went to the nursery and bought plants and cedar bark to lay down as mulch and resolved to pull weeds and plant new growth until the back yard was done.

I pulled weeds yesterday until it got dark and then woke up early this morning and pulled more, then planted bulbs and plants and then layed down cedar bark. The garden looks beautiful and I feel accomplished and happy that I stuck to my plan. I’d still like to buy some more bark to lay down to prevent weed growth but I can always do that next week.

I also was planting strawberries on the slope behind our house when my foot slipped out from under me on some wet grass and I landed on my stomach on a narrow, wooden retaining wall. It hurt like hell and when I took a shower today I noticed I have a large, 5″, purple and red bruise stretching across my stomach. Breathing is also slightly painful. I didn’t know gardening could be so hazardous but it seems like if there’s a way to hurt yourself doing an activity thought of as non-dangerous then I’ll figure it out.

I’m so not looking forward to work this next week. I can only pray that it’ll slow down but I’m not going to hold my breath.

Last week when I was in Zurich I worked 4, 16-hour days in a row. Add in my traveling time and I worked a total of 86 hours in one week.

I bring this up because this was another hellish week at work, and I wasn’t even traveling. My boss forced me to miss two appointments with my personal trainer, both of which are scheduled in the evening, and in addition I had to stay late Friday to re-check a document I’d already spent more than 30 hours editing throughout the week.

Several days I attended so many meetings that when I was through I had less than 2 hours to actually accomplish any real work.

I talked with the Good Doc about this and we’re both in agreement that working 86 hours in one week is insane and I’m not going to do it anymore. I never agreed to work like this when I was hired for this job and I made very clear when interviewing that I had a life outside the office and I felt a proper balance of work and other activities make for a much happier and more productive employee. In my case there is far too much work going on and way too little fun and it’s starting to affect my relationship with my boyfriend and my physical and mental well being.

So starting next week I will not stay at work past 5:00 PM on Monday, Wednesday or Friday. Those are days I workout with my trainer and I won’t miss another appointment. If it means I walk out of a meeting in the middle of the meeting then I will do so, regardless of the consequences. If I get fired then I’m prepared to accept that, as is my boyfriend.

I will no longer read e-mails while away from work and will not check e-mails after I leave work or on the weekends. In addition when I’m traveling overseas I will work 8 hours in the time zone in which I’m traveling but I won’t feel pressured to add an additional 8 hours so I can correspond real-time with our office in California.

There’s a wonderful sense of peace that comes from just not giving a shit anymore and that’s exactly how I’m feeling now. I’m resolute but calm and entirely at peace with this decision. I’m employed now but I may not be after I make it clear that anymore 60-70 hour work weeks are out of the question, at least for me.

Condoleeza Rice was the worst National Security Advisor in the history of the United States and she’ll go down as one of the worst, if not THE worst, Secretary of State.

It’ll be nice to see how she justifies the upcoming invasion of Iran now that the Bush administration’s lies have been exposed on Iraq.

Oh well, now that she’s the Secretary of State maybe they’ll finally allow her to start sleeping in the big house.

The title of this entry is basically what Harvard University President Lawrence Summers views are being reduced to.

It’s a sad commentary on the state of academia in today’s United States that Summers can’t even mention the idea that there may be reasons that women don’t do as well as men in math and science other than the commonly accepted theory of “gender discrimination.”

In today’s identity-fuled victimization-based world of academia there is only ONE accepted theory for why minorities (and women, because women are the majority) don’t do as well as whites or men, and that’s because they’re discriminated against.

It doesn’t matter that affirmative action-based programs have raised the number of minorities and women getting into Ivy league schools over the past thirty years. We all know that whitey really controls whether the poor negroes and women do well, and if they don’t, well then it’s obvious the white man is trying to undermine the black man (and in this case, the white women).

Let’s look at what Summers said. He said there could be additional reasons which add to or replace the existing theories of why women don’t do as well in math or science as men. Those would be:

1. Women want to have children, so they end up leaving the field earlier than men so they can have and raise kids.
2. Women may not have natural apptitude for the sciences because of differences in brain fucntionality between women and men.
3. The common theory that institutional discrimination exists in academia.

Now I know enough women who have Ph.Ds in math and science so I don’t necessarily accept that women can’t handle it. But academia is supposed to be where one can air different points-of-view without being lynched. And for Summer’s efforts he was forced to apologize and recant as if Harvard were one of Mao’s Cultural Revolutionary kangaroo courts instead of a premier institution of higher learning.

Thus we see what academia, and in particular leftist, east coast-based academics have been reduced to. Like the oldest priests and priestesses of an ancient and dying religion they’ve become keepers of outdated and archaic orthodoxy rather than tenders of a vibrant and forward-thinking academia.

With this mentality riding high at Harvard its no wonder the US is losing its place in the world of new ideas. They can blame it on the Bush administration all they want but in the end they’re really the ones smothering new and important methods of thought.

There were two articles in today’s New York Times that caught my eye.

The
first dealt with the issue of Europe’s angry Muslim mullahs and how the
Europeans are becoming a bit uncomfortable with the anti-Semitic,
anti-Western and racist rhetoric issuing from the filthy mouths of
these Islamic “holy men.” It seems that it was OK when the rhetoric
only called for war against “the Jews” but now that it has escalated to
the level of calling for the overthrow of democratically elected
European governments it has stepped over a line.

“We’re fed up with him,” said a senior British official, speaking of Sheik Omar. “He needs to be stopped, or he needs to go.”

Duh.

Europe
is finally waking up to the fact that allowing these people in their
midst is like deliberately nursing and feeding a cancerous tumor in
your own body. Eventually the tumor metastasizes, spreads and ends up
killing the host. The best option is usually radical surgery and if the
Europeans were smart they would have followed France’s lead and started
expelling these mullahs back to their countries of origin a long time
ago.

The
second article deals again with the Muslim world and its shameful
refusal, except for a few Muslim nations, to attend and commemorate the
Holocaust memorial session of the UN General Assembly this week. Of all
the Muslim nations in the world only three, Afghanistan, Jordan and
Turkey, sent representatives to the session.

This
would be shocking if it wasn’t typical of the anti-Semitic, racist
Muslim world, but it is. Muslims give free reign to anti-Semites in
their midst, harbor Nazi war criminals like Alois Bruner in Syria,
teach anti-Jewish propaganda as fact and regularly air anti-Jewish
propaganda on TV like the Egyptian-produced version of “The Protocols
of the Elders of Zion.” Their record is disgusting but typical and it
will always be the enduring shame of Muslim people everywhere that the
murder of 1/2 the world’s population of Jews isn’t worthy of their time.

Forced
to watch that terrible taxi driver movie Jimmy Fallon did with Queen
Latifah while flying in coach to Zurich is a terrible-enough fate for
anyone, much less someone as pampered as myself. Thus it was my fate to
see that awful movie this past week, and for some reason it has
solidified my general dislike of former SNL cast-member Jimmy Fallon
into a hard, crystalline rock of pure hatred.

It wasn’t the
enevitable
“wacky-white-guy-buddies-up-with-streetwise-wise-crackin’-black-woman”
plot that caught my eye, we’ve all seen a million of those in one form
or another. No, it was Fallon’s horrific inability to look natural on
camera and his condescending smirk throughout the film that did.

Fallon
was insufferable on SNL for what seemed like forever and now the
powers-that-be in Hollywood are trying to make a star out of him. In
the age old tradition of attempting to foist off onto us unpaltable
tragedies like Brittany Murphy (the poster girl for eating disorders in
Hollywood) and Vin Diesel (closeted gay) they’re now trying to do the
same with Jimmy Fallon.

But if this terrible movie (that was
so bad I forgot the title) is any example they’re going to have to work
a lot harder. Afterall, at least Brittany Murphy had Clueless under her belt when they forced her to lose 40 pounds and dye her hair blonde. Fallon doesn’t even have that going for him.

He
looks like a retarded siamese cat with a bad haircut, his
“ain’t-I-the-dickens” attitude wears thin very quickly, his eyebrows
are so waxed and arched he looks like a male version of Joan Crawford
and he’s the worst actor of his generation. Jimmy Fallon must die.

Today I was standing by the coffee machine at work making a cup of tea and minding my own business when this women I know from meetings said to me, after looking through all the numerous possibilities we have at our coffee bar, “I don’t know what I want.” I looked back at her and said “who does?” At this she burst into laughter and walked away.

The sad thing is: I’m serious. She thought it was a joke but I am fuckin’ serious.

Yawn, people bore me, I wish I could spend all my time by myself or with just me and my boyfriend. On second thought, all my time by myself.

Here