Saddam is set to hang

A senior Iraqi government official tells me Tuesday night that the execution of Saddam Hussein will be carried out this way:
On the day of the execution, Saddam will be taken to the gallows now used to execute “terrorists and criminals.” He will not be given special treatment.
He will be dressed in either a green or an orange jumpsuit. He will be handcuffed. His feet will be chained, with only enough slack so he can shuffle up the stairs to the gallows. He will be hooded. He will wear prison sandals.
The hangman will also be hooded, but with a hood with eyeholes so he can see to pull a lever, releasing a trap door, dropping Saddam.
The gallows are made of steel, 15 feet off the ground. The gallows have been built with American supervision to meet "human rights standards." The old gallows had an old rope that had become elastic. There is now a new rope designed to snap Saddam's neck, not strangle him.
Before the execution, not expected before the new year, Saddam will be given a final meal, and time to smoke, pray and write a will. This could take several hours.
A doctor will check Saddam's health before the execution and remain on hand to verify his death.
The execution will be filmed for the Iraqi government archives. Limited footage of the execution will be broadcast on Iraqi state television.
--Richard Engel, NBC Middle East correspondent and Beirut bureau chief

another christmas is in the books

Candace is on my mind constantly. She's in Europe spending some Q.T. with the parentals. You know, time apart sounds like a good idea on paper, but it sucks big time. I am so lonely right now, I can't even see straight. She's been gone about four days, but it seems like a damn eternity. She usually calls twice a day, but my phone has been dead all day. I haven't had a chance to charge it because I've just been busy with my mom and dad and stuff. Not being able to talk to her induces a pain similar to taking an olympic javelin to the nutsack. It sucks. At this point, sleeping is an indulgence that a person in my current situation doesn't get to relish in, so I'll just recount my christmas experience. I guess christmas technically starts on Christmas Eve, so I'll begin there.

First thing in the morning, Katie calls me up and we have lunch at Qdoba's, which I'm always down for. Katie's truck is pretty sweet and the fact that she named it Carl makes it even better. I was shocked to hear about her sister's boyfriend. He's in a rough spot. He'll be okay though. He's a good kid (god I feel old). Her brother also found himself a decent lady. He's going to propose to her soon. Skatie was telling me that he got her a ring. Umm... I guess... if Angela's little sister is reading this, pretend to be surprised. Then, Matt comes over at about 3:00. We hang out and watch Aqua Teen until 5:00 when they had to leave.

Then, it was quality time with my new toy until about 7:00 when I headed over to Mom's house. Xbox rode shotgun in my fag bag. I took Sarah out for milk and cookies and we rented a movie. Never watched it. I hope it gets returned. We came back and baked the cookies. I proceeded to lose myself to Gears of War and Rainbow Six: Vegas until I got a random phonecall from my dad's number, but the voice coming from the other end of the line wasn't my dad... IT WAS PAPPY!!! I guess he had driven up from Tennessee so that Mary and little Xaeden could spend some time with Mary's family. Pappy made the extra effort to come up and hang out. I called Matt and we made a little mini-event out of it. We played video games until Jerry did what he does best and made a complete jackass of himself. Nothing major, aside from making my friends and I feel like a complete and total unwelcome burden (he has a thing for that, doesn't he?) Anywho, we headed over to Matt's and attempted to pull an all-nighter. Didn't happen. We crashed out at about 5:30.

10:00 A.M. rolled around pretty damn early on Christmas this year. I pretty much just woke up and headed over to Mom's house. Pappy headed down to Gosport so he could be with his family and Matt did his thing. Came to Mom's just in time to miss Sarah's gala-unveiling of her usual Christmas smorgasbord of gifts. I'm kind of relieved. I can sense that she's growing up a little bit. She has a better sense of appreciation. I'll never forget Christmas 2005. She tears ass through a vast cornucopia of gifts only to look up at her parents from amidst the ocean of torn wrapping paper and belt out, "awww... no portable dvd player. Oh well." It was more than a little disturbing. Anywho, she got some clothes and a pink razor phone. That's all she really wanted. I honestly feel kind of bad for her. Mom and Jerry are having a rough time, too.

I headed over to Dad's at about 2:00. He was still in bed all sore from his Peanut-Butter fiasco from the night before. Apparently, he decided that it would be a brilliant idea to get slobbering-drunk with Toby, Christen, and Squeel and actually attempt to walk the dog. Well, one thing led to the next and my poor retarded father ended up in the middle of the street with what appears to be a twisted knee and a "somewhat" broken arm. idiot. Looking back, I really wish that I would have stayed at my dad's house and actually managed a good time on Christmas Eve and maybe aided in my dad avoiding the whole broken-arm situation. Him and Squeel got each other ipods. I hope they enjoy their movie theater gift certificates... lame. I digress. We did the gift-exchange thing. I made out pretty well, I must say (it's tough to be humble when you own a custom-crafted marshmallow gun). Dad and I managed a little bonding time. He pretty much layed in the bedroom and watched me play Gears of War. He seemed impressed, but he has a really good way of faking that particular trait.

I headed over to Matt's at about 9:00 to hang out with him and abbey at about 9:00. I got to watch them do their gift-exchange. They are really awesome together. Matt's a great dude (although a little female-retarded), and Abbey is pretty much his version of what I have with Candace. It feels pretty great when I know that my close friend can get as much happiness out of life as I get out of mine. Seeing her just made me think about Candace that much more. We hung out until about 3:00. I packed up and came home. Attempted to sleep until I started writing this and now here I am, still missing the hell out of my god-damn Candace. This sucks.

TSD Daily Blog #1

I have this great idea. I'm starting a daily blog for my overtime at TSD. I'm just going to leave it open all day and jot down whatever comes to mind. First, watching the movie Resident Evil has prompted the question, "what would win in a fight, a zombie-doberman or a vampiric rotweiller?" Well, I aim to find out.

My first natural decision was to say that the vampire dog would kick the shit out of a zombie dog. First of all, rotweillers are totally badass. A rotweiller could kick the hell out of a doberman any damn day of the week. But, we aren't just talking about dogs. Specifically, we are discussing zombie-dobermans and vampire rotweillers. When the specifics get thrown into the mix, things get a little more complicated. In order to guage the outcome of this battle, one must consider the enhanced powers and instincts of each respective entity.


As previously stated, I personally favor the vamp-weiller. Rottweilers are obviously more badass and their natural tendency is to go for the neck. Plus, a vampire dog would have enhanced strength, whereas a zombie dog would be lucky to keep all of its' limbs attached.
Let's say, for the sake of not making this article too overly-ridiculous, that the vamp-weiller does not posess the ability to morph into a bat. However, the dead blood does pose an interesting twist.

Let's think about what would happen in the event of an exchange of bites. Both species posess the power to "turn" their victims, meaning that a zombie bite would render the victim a zombie. A vampire bite would result in the victim turning into a vampire. It has been portrayed, though, that if a naturally-born vampire is killed, all of its' undead "victims" would ultimately expire as well. This point, although doesn't exactly pertain to the proposed scenario, does play into the bigger picture. A zombie lacks any function of their internal organs (aside from very basic main brain function fueling the zombie's rage and will to ingest flesh). So, one could only assume that, in the event of a vampire bite, the effect of the bite would not produce any results. It is assumed that vampires, although technically are described as "undead," do have working organs and a circulatory system. This point could be illustrated in two ways:

1) One widely-known way to kill a vampire is to stab it in the heart with a wooden stake. If the heart were dead/disconnected from the entity, a stab to the heart would yield no results.

2) In the film, "Underworld," during the CGI scene where Marcus is awakened, his heart is shown beating within his chest.

Essentially, a vampiric-rotweiller bite would be uneffective and a zombie-doberman bite would result in the transformation of the animal into a zombie.

Another trait that cannot be overlooked is super-strength. Vampires are known to posess enhanced physical strength. Considering that human vampires have the intelligence to distinguish between a blood-sucking bite and an all-out mauling. Dogs do not harbor such intelligence. It is a safe assumption that if a vampire-rotweiller were to lunge for the neck, it would unleash all of its' raw strength thus resulting in one of two possible outcomes:

1) The zombie-doberman's head will be bitten clean-off.

2) The spinal connections between the dog's head and body will be severed.

Both outcomes would result in the demise of the zombie.

Now, it could also be assumed that this exchange could be deadly for the vampire dog as well. The film, "Interview with the Vampire," shows us that dead or coagulated blood is deadly to a vampire. This is illustrated when the character of Claudia (portrayed by Kirsten Dunst) offers a meal of sedated humans to Le Stat (Tom Cruise). This particular "feast," concludes as a sort of vampire poison, as the sacrificed humans are already dead. This shows that a bite from a vamp-weiller to a zomberman could be deadly to the vampire as well.

Alas, I conclude by saying that a battle between a single zombie-doberman and a vampire-rotweiller would result in an even tie. The physically superior vamp-weiller would lunge for the neck of the zombie-doberman and bite the head clean off (killing the zombie). The blood of the zomberman, however, would enter the system of the vamp-weiller resulting in the death of the vampire.

Not much, but...

A fifteen hour work day doesn't leave much to write about, but there is the....

T.S.D. Quote of the Day:

"I'd eat pussy if it had bacon on it!"

Thank you, Adam Nila.

BEARD UPDATE: 2 MONTHS

I want to poop... back and forth... forever.

I haven't been very up-to-date with my posting recently. As always, there is a slew of things going on right now which would never allot the time to be able to write about. I guess we can start with today.

We woke up early to go to the doctor. As it turns out, everything is a-okay. It was kind of weird. I had been to the exact same office for a urinalisys for a job (I think it was H.H. Gregg).

Then, I headed back over to her place and snoozed for about 2 1/2 hours before getting up for work. I feel kind of bad about the computer mess. In fact, I took a picture of it:
Now, I'm at work. T.S.D. Quote of the day: "We'll work something out for the kids to visit on the weekends, but I done told him he ain't gettin mah car." N.F.L. Sunday ticket campaign starts back up today. That means hella overtime for my ass. I'm amped about it to tell you the truth.

UPDATE: About an hour after publishing this entry, Garlena comes into the office asking if I would be willing to clean up a mess in the bathroom. Since I've graciously offered my skills of having a stomach made of steel, I complied. So, I was awarded the opprotunity to clean up some shit (yes, human shit) off the bathroom floor. I was hoping to get some Taco Bell out of it, but thus far no dice.

a while back, joey gaylor and i decided to get tattoos of each other's names on our bodies. i was just hanging out at corey's house and wanted to give him a tattoo. after hours of begging, he finally decided to allow me to do it. this was about 4 months ago.

eddie brock turning into venom

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/vine/showthread.php?t=519805

11-12-06 7:23 pm undercover cop

i guess vacation is in a couple of days

vacation will be good for me. jake and i are going to tennessee to see pappy and little xaeden. i'm not really sure if this is the best thing for me emotionally/financially, but i'm going nonetheless.

the hard thing is that all the little gaps between thoughts are filled with mike. not gears of war, not vacation, not even candace. i miss him.

the first full day that mike ward couldn't be a part of

the one thing that just keeps being mentioned is how asenine it is that such bad people are rewarded with life, but some "higher authority," deems it necessary to rob the world of good wholesome people. why does...

i guess this will just be a short entry. after pondering over the words "why does," for about ten minutes, my mind was flooded with far more thoughts than what my brain could organize into a legible entry. you get the idea.

hey mike. it's only been one day and i already miss you like crazy.

the last time i talked to mike

the last time i saw mike ward, we were in the office and i had come up with a fun "contest". first person who can find out what happens to zoo animals after they die wins a prize. so, mike takes it upon himself to look up the phone number for the san diego zoo (it was like 9:00 so we had to call a zoo that was still open). he suggested that i tell them the truth, that i was just sitting around with some buddies wondering. my idea was to tell them that i was a student writing a paper on ethics in the field of animal care. anyway, he gets the number, but i couldn't get past the automated message. then, he looks up a news article online and finds out exactly what happens to zoo animals after death. i swear that i had already looked for about an hour beforehand and found nothing. he finds the article and sends it to me on myspace. we did crap like this in the office all the time. he always had a knack for finding fun under any circumstances.

ps. if you want to know what happens to zoo animals when they die, check out my nov. 10, 2006 entry. this is the article he sent to me.

don't read too much into this...

i had written this entry and saved it as a draft, with intention on finishing the thought at a later point. honestly, it seems a little trivial considering what happened with mike (R.I.P.). looking back in retrospect, there are bigger things happening here. i honestly shouldn't be wasting my time with trivial problems like this. however, i do feel that it is important to take a good look at the status of my life leading up to this tragedy. i say this because i am pretty sure that my life is forever changed by it. honestly, one thing i can take from his death is the realization that life isn't what you make of it. you can do what you wish in order to make life more fun/interesting/exciting/etc. but life is something that we just ride along with. if life turns toward marriage, you'll get married. if life suggests that it's time to go to college, you'll go. if life tells you that it's your time to die, then life will pull your car over to the left side of that line and bring it all to an ending that we will all inevitably face. you see, i've realized that no matter what happens leading up the point of no return, as long as you go at the pinnacel of your life, that's all that matters. i keep telling myself that it's kind of a good thing that he went at a strong point of his life, before life for him had a chance to turn for the worse. i digress. the following paragraphs describe the state of mind that i was in just before mike's life was taken from him.


i work my ass off. i work hard. yet every day, i feel less and less that the home that i pay for is my actual home. i get bitched a for my dog, so i give her away. she was the main reason that i moved in. i moved in with lindsey and lance because they had enough room for my dog. then, they start bitching. they say that there's not enough room for her and start locking her in my room all day while i'm working. a bedroom isn't enough room for a dog. to add insult to injury, they bring home another dog, even though there was barely enough room for peanutbutter and bruizer. i digress... i give my dog to my dad (which i was assuming was out of the question or i would have moved in with him to begin with). next comes the bitching. they want me to do more dishes... dishes. i use, maybe, three dishes per week. i even clean and rinse them when i'm done. sorry, roommate. i'm not going to waste my time cleaning dishes that i don't use. i don't clean up after their dogs. sorry, i gave my dog away. my days of cleaning up doggie messes are over. i am truly tired of paying money to feel like a burden on my roommates.

then enters candace (and her new cozy apartment), my savior. i finally have a safe haven i could retreat to where i felt like nothing in the world could happen to me. we hang out, watch tv, browse the web, eat, sleep, etc. basically, she offered me a place to just go and be happy with her. it was great. then, just as i start to think that something is going to go just the way i'd have it, someone else decides to come in and start throwing shit around. apparently, the mere presence of a male is a little much for some people in this world to handle. basically, with the flip of a switch, i am no longer welcome in my own paradise. the one place where i feel comfortable/safe/loved/welcome in this world is no longer accessible to me. i understand that with some effort, i could "work" my way back in. i could be nice to this person who has made it so obvious that my mere existance is a burden. but then, what kind of situation does this create? she isn't dumb girl by any means. she knows, deep down, that she's unjustly made someone else's business her own. thus, she will then assume that my kindness to her could be translated into my attempting to weasel my way back into their place. even though i would never be that way, she would have no way of knowing it. i know that these problems may seem asenine, it just sucks to be cast out of a place that you love so much to begin with.

basically, i feel like i am welcome nowhere. i feel like no matter where i go, someone is going to feel uncomfortable. i could go to mom's, but jerry would have a thing or two to say about it. i could go to my dad's, but michele wants her own kids. i know she does. candace's is a possibility, but not until some serious effort is put into the relations between myself and her roommate. my home is still a carnival. the largest problem with this whole situation is that i just feel like i go so far out of my way to be nice to everyone. i always do the right thing, in every situation. it seems that jobless assholes who focus on nothing but taking advantage of every decent person in their lives have an easier time finding solace in the world than i do. *end

this journal entry was not finished. however, i would like to add that my time this week/weekend with matt and the crew was amazing. i found myself dwelling on this particular entry and began to formulate some new feelings about what "home" really is. i started to ponder the idea of "home" as a place within the person. we've all heard that home is where the heart is, and my heart is with the people that i love, not a free-standing structure on the west side of indianapolis. i'll have to elaborate on these ideas later. i miss you mike. i know that you'll be with me forever, bub.

R.I.P. Michael Travis Ward

Man killed in Hendricks county accident

this is the official report from www.wthr.com


Hendricks County - A Carmel man was killed Sunday morning on State Road 267 about two miles south of Brownsburg when the car he was driving crossed the center-line and struck another vehicle nearly head-on.
Michael Ward of Carmel was northbound on State Road 267 when his 2006 Honda Accord crossed the roadway and hit a Chevrolet Tahoe that was traveling southbound. Ward was removed from the vehicle and transported to Wishard Hospital where he was pronounced dead as a result of his injuries.
Ward was not wearing a seat belt and alcohol is not believed to have been a factor in the crash.
The driver of the of the SUV, Charles Page, and his passenger, Dana Page, both of Brownsburg were both transported to Methodist Hospital with minor injuries.
It is not known why Ward's car went across the centerline.

Mike Ward was my boss at teleservices direct in avon. he spent most of his sunday mornings visiting with his grandparents. i learned of his death at about 3 o'clock today. i really feel that it's still too early to describe my feelings because, frankly, it is just overwhelming. all i can say is that he was a good man who influenced all those around him. he had the ability to change the world around him without even realizing it. he had a pull on the way people talk, act, laugh, etc. i know that he will be missed and that he lived a life worth living. i will update again soon.

ever wonder what happens to oversized zoo animals when they die?

First, a necropsy is performed, and then the remains are cremated. The carcasses of all animals that die at the National Zoo—including those that wander into the park from outside—are brought to an on-site pathology lab for thorough examination. Zoo staffers identify the cause of death (if it isn't already known) and preserve tissue samples that might be important for research or education. (The zoo maintains an archive of formalin-soaked specimens from every animal that's died there since the 1970s; the Bronx Zoo has tissue samples dating back to 1920.) After the necropsy, Toni's carcass—which weighs thousands of pounds—was shipped to a lab in College Park, Md., where it will be incinerated starting Friday. The process should take about 24 hours.
Toni, like other elephants, is part of a national conservation program that has its own protocol for necropsies, as well as an updated list of which body parts should be saved. Instructions for elephant necropsies, for example, suggest a "chain saw, axe, or reciprocating saw to cut through the cranium" and "carts on rollers to move heavy parts." (Click here for a document that describes the procedure.) The elephant parts now in demand for research purposes include intact brains, eyes, and "two whole large thoracic ribs."
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Not all species are part of a national program, and not all zoos keep tissue samples from every single animal. Most of the time, parts are donated as needed. Scientists who study exotic species can ask a zoo ahead of time to save a certain body part or blood sample. The zoo's education department might also receive some excised parts. Docents could use a tortoiseshell or a patch of cheetah skin, for example, as a part of educational presentations. Natural-history museums often have a need for skulls and other bones; the Smithsonian (which runs the National Zoo) sometimes requests carcasses for their displays of taxidermic critters.
Laws on the final disposal of a dead animal vary from place to place, but incineration seems to be the most popular method. The first elephant at the Baltimore Zoo, Mary Ann, received an official burial in a Maryland graveyard when she died in 1941.

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