Quick Shots for Friday Happy Hour

*So, you may be wondering...what's with the lack of posts lately? There's been two debates in the past week...where's my "That's Debatable?" (Answer: check back say, Sunday afternoon.)

Well, it's because I found the new surest way to get a bad night's sleep: boring dreams. Do I know why they've been happening? No. But I can tell you I've gone to work hungover after mixing and matching beer and liqour in all the wrong ways and felt better than I did forcing myself awake in my desk after actually having a dream that consisted solely of me...trying to get to sleep. And thus far my attempts to counter this are meeting with mixed results. Sadly, making mental, pre-bed notes to my brain to just think happy thoughts--like say, spending quality time in a tropical, clothing-optional beach setting with both Katherine McPhee and Jessica Alba (brunette Jessica Alba, not the dyed blonde Fantastic Four Jessica btw)--well, it didn't work. GNC has a nice blend of time-release vitamins, hops (you know, like beer) and a shit ton of valerian root extract that I tried last night. There were some better results (the dreams were less boring, but I don't think Freud would be prepared for the part where I gave ESPN's Tony Kornheiser a tour of my apartment complex) but there was also a long stretch of tedium where I made my lunch for Friday. So my quick dream theory here is: ideally they're a way to escape the mundaneties (it's a word...now) of daily life, and when those mundane aspects creep into dreams, it makes me really tired and zombie-like.

But here's some stuff:

What can you get for $27 million dollars?
That figure came up not once, or twice, but thrice this week in my readings.

1. It was the amount of money it cost to build the Creation Museum. Now I'm not going to say the government should step in and tell a private business they can't build a place like this (really, look at it as a theme park)...but that doesn't shake the really disturbed feelings I get that there are enough people in the US that want an out-of-touch-with-reality-fantasyland of their own. Especially coupled with the really hard-right, theocratic-leaning universities with law school graduates populating Bush Administration posts (see Goodling, Monica).
The defense the loony Fundies give is "people should see all views." Ok. But where's the "Gil Gerard Time-Travelled And Jerked Off Into The Primordial Ooze, Thereby Creating Life" museum and why isn't this equally valid view being taught?

2. Speaking of the Sin of Onan, Congress may or not put up twenty-seven mil more to the already widely discredited abstinence-only education groups. The kicker? The groups advocate no sex until marriage, or until you're thirty. Makes me wonder if there are some hardcore fundies that secretly like Sex In the City...and pisses me off. I could've sworn the motivation for most folks that voted democrat in '06 was for a change in Bush & Co. bass-ackwards policies, and...other than Speaker Pelosi taking a trip the Bushies didn't want her to take the Dems seem to be suffering from Stockholm Syndrome or something. Much as it pains me to say it 2008 is not in the bag just because Bush is at 28%. Get off your butts and at least try to lead, because I really don't want to watch Fred Thompson's inaugeration.

3. But 27 million can go to a good cause too. Like say, Tesla motorcars. 0-60 in 4 seconds, 200 mile range. No gas. No oil. Ever. Yes, I want one. However, they apparently have nothing to do with the former hair band that made it big with "Love Song."

(Related note: tonight I'm playing a mix of UGA and Red Sox player #s for my lotto ticket. If I win, look for the one guy in Athens with a Tesla in 2008 or so.)

DailyKos has a great diary comparing the "plight" of celebutard Paris Hilton with incarcerated GA resident Genarlow Wilson. Read it, and get pissed.

And lastly, a bit of a personal downer (to have a nice bit of unity with the start of this post), this is the first week out of the last three that I didn't get to see a famous author give a reading (note: famous in this case is highly relative).