The Writings of Jim Nolandy

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Hi my name is Jim Nolandy. I am 24 and I currently attend San Jose State University. I love to write about occurences in my life that I find interesting or strange. Whenever I have a moment to take a breath and look around I always find something to talk about. The world is a very interesting place and I am here to find those things that are interesting.

12/10/06

Just after I came back from my trip to New York, I remembered hearing about a great way to bicycle down from San Mateo to Santa Cruz. My friends and I are planning to do this trip momentarily since we figured out how to do it.

To take this route, you can start off in any part of San Mateo or even further north, if you'd like. Most people would try to take Highway 92 to Halfmoon Bay to get to highway 1, but it is a steep hill so most beginners, like my friends and I, avoid it. You can also take skyline road, which pretty much extends up to San Francisco, but when transferring over to Highway 1, once again, it is very difficult to climb. I heard that if you take Woodside road, one of the main arteries of Redwood City, California, you can go straight and easy to the Ocean. There is some climbing, but I was told it was not as intense as the other two routes. If you are heading from the city, you must also seriously consider doing this since no longer can you right straight along Highway 1 all the way from the city. After all, devil's slide is in disrepair and they are still working on making a tunnel to replace that route.

That's all for today, I hope you liked hearing about me and my adventures.

Jim

Juan Cole

Who is this guy and what does he want from us?

Juan Cole is actually pretty interesting and his website linked here is very informative and links to many interesting articles, which on his website he critiques.

He works in the department of history at the University of Michigan and specifies his studies in the middle east particular. His informed comment page has been almost entirely about the Iraq War for quite a while now. Most of his editorials explain that the Iraq War is basically a product of our current administration being complete assholes and their innability to wage war responsibly. In one of his most current comments he mentions that the Right will not consider the Iraq War as a civil war because the U.S. would be considered the cause of it.

To really get a good opinion and understanding of his work it is important to visit his website.

A Great Website to Submit Your Life

www.somethingawful.com is the worst website in the world.

These bastards think it is so funny to make fun of the internet by calling it the 'internets'. They also make threads about pooing on each other.

They have a column about World of Warcraft! What nerds! If they have to spend time to write about a stupid online game they obviously have no life.

And there is this stupid guy named Dr. Thorpe who makes fun of everyone's band. What an asshole. Can't he just learn to respect other peoples' opinions! He should keep his opinions to himself!

They're also led by some jerk named Lowtax. Who is this guy and why does he make stupid movies like Doom House and Death Hat? LOL. Why is his name Lowtax, anyway. It probably has nothing to do with Byron 'Lowtax' Looper who was once the Putnam County Tax Assessor in Tennessee.

And those stupid morons that post in the forums call themselves 'goons'! What, are they calling themselves that because they were such goons to pay ten dollars to join the forums. I bet!

Well, I hate this website, so I hope you never visit it.

In Attempt to Mystify

Meritory: I am going to be upfront and honest with you folks for a second and it requires instense concentration.

Who am I really?
Why did I make this blog?
Who the fuck is Montgomery Johnson?

I don't feel like mentioning my real name but you can call me meritory. I live in San Jose. I go to school at San Jose State University. My roommate is currently putting shrimp into his fishbowl. I am currently sick and I have a fever. I am a political science major. I play guitar in a band. I've been known to draw funny pictures. I ride a bike.

I made this blog because my teacher told me to. She's a very angry woman that perhaps acts scary to have people percieve her as angry so that they will listen to what she tells us to do. She doesn't seem that scary or angry at all to me so I think she's faking it. Either way, I'm still doing the assignment she told us to do.

Montgomery Johnson is a fictional character. Come on, isn't it obvious? I made him to be something like an angrier me who considers himself conservative, or the epitome of conservatism. "Why don't I have a character that is like LDPDMJ, but instead he is liberal?" you ask. Well, then I'd be redundant cause I am the liberal version of LDPDMJ.

THE MEANING OF LIFE

Meritory:Just kidding, I don't really feel like writing about that at the moment.

After reading Something Awful and their forums one day I discovered there was this little thing called RealPolitik. I had not heard the details of this idea before so I decided to look into it.

What is RealPolitik?

Essentially it's this way of thinking and discussing politics that involves excluding idealistic notions. One might want to claim things would be better "if it were like [this]," but Real Politik is out there to dissolve this manner of thinking altogether claiming that thinking idealogically is not looking at the whole picture. This method is the same thing as Realism in politics and is used primarily by conservatives to articulate their ideas against those of their opponents. One of the ways they use Real Politik is to diminish the validity of liberal arguments by pointing out that they are "too idealistic" and not realistic enough.

To make it clearer, I've decided to compare some paraphrased passages between idealogical political discussion and Real Politik style.

1.

Idealogical: There should be peace in the world!

POLITIK: There should be peace in the world, but it will require war with countries that oppose peace in the world.

2.

Idealogical: We should impeach our President because he has lied to us as a nation!

POLITIK: Sure, it is important that we question our government, but imagine how much worse the problems in the world will get if we're busy arguing over whether or not our president is good. There are much worse people to go after in the world.

3.

Idealogicial: We need to conserve our energy and waste less.

POLITIK: Waste less? If anything, focusing on our energy is wasteful. We have peoples' needs to meet, here, and they do not lessen by the day. In fact, if we don't worry about getting power and homes to our population, then soon everyone will be homeless! And plus, nothing is going to sell if it is overpriced because it has to go through millions of tests to make sure no little precious animals are hurt in its production. Why don't you just take your skinny liberal ass and go stop all of the cars and all of the factories and every institution in the United States of America so nothing gets hurt and dies anymore.

4.

Idealogical: Conservatives tend to have better judgement than liberals.

POLITIK: Well, I mean yea that's right.

5.

Idealogical: Progressively changing into a more socialistic institution will help provide more jobs, develop better health care, and insure that cities are developing as a whole and not simply to raise profits temporarily.

POLITIK: How the hell do you know that, asshole? Seriously, you liberals all think you're smarter than us. Well I have to tell you something: your idealogical notions are worth NOTHING and everything you say is nothing but bull crap that is not realistic. To survive in this world you need to let your stupid hippie ideas go and stop pretending you KNOW EVERYTHING. Gah. And read this article, too, while you're at it:

REAL POLITIK