Should I just go ahead and rename this the Pictures of Keegan Blog? That's pretty much all I'm doing with it now, right?

    Today is Keegan's first day of pre-school! It was another one of those firsts that I'm very proud to have been a part of.

    Three months since my last post, eh? That's the longest I've gone without updating since I started this whole blog some years ago. Go me!

    Life is going on the same as it has always done, more or less. Summers have always been slow for me. I love the weather but hate the boredom of it all. And instead of boring the lot of you by telling you the things I've done I'll just post a few pictures.

    This post is mostly to let family members know that I'm still alive and nothing too terrible has befallen me. And I suppose this post goes out to my online friends whom I haven't really spoken to in a while. Maybe I'll see you folks again when school starts?

    Below you'll find pictures of my mother, of my sister, of my nephew, of an aunt, of me, and of some critters.

    So I thought I'd say a few words to let everyone know how I'm doing; I'm fine. I'm also really enjoying the fact that I'm staying away from not only social networking sites but the whole internet, as well. And don't think I'm replacing my addiction to the 'net with an addiction to TV. Nope. In fact, I'm giving my TV away. I'm going to be TV-less for the first time since I lived in Spain. You know what? I'm really happy about that.

    Anyway, here are a few pictures from the past few weeks. There's that one where the sky was beautiful, covered in contrails though it might have been. Then there's the one with my little friend who lives on the tree outside my window. Third is the picture of my kitchen after one of my roommates thought it would be a good idea to start a grease fire. Next is a picture of how I spent Cuatro de Mayo: drinking 'ritas at the Outback. Finally you see another one of my roommates cleaning the kitchen. What a champ.

    I don't know my own dad's phone number. The one person that I know who does know the number, my grandpa (which would be dad's dad) wasn't answering his phone. So how am I supposed to call my dad on his birthday to give him some birthday wishes?

    Suppose I just won't, then. But I'm sure he reads my LJ here (even though I haven't posted on it in forever) so I'll just say happy birthday here. Happy birthday, dad!

    Also, I haven't seen Keegan since Easter so I'll just have to post another one of those pictures here. I know how my folks love to look at their grandkid.

    Woohoo, haven't posted in a while, right? To make up for it I plan to write a bit more than normal today (and fuck making an LJ cut here!). Not only that, but I plan to post more than one picture! How does that sound? Sounds great, no?





    I didn't have a job last year so I had a taxable income of about $0.00. So, really, Uncle Sam took about 100% of my paycheck in 2008. That's too much for someone so far under the poverty line! If I didn't have class I might have been at one of West Virginia's tea parties. I really want to tea bag someone today.

    Right now, Glenn Beck (professional dickhole) is at the Alamo doing one of his tea parties. I love that he chose the Alamo because I love history. Do you know the history of the Alamo and the Texas Revolution? Check this out:

    Mexico just won its War of Independence from the Spanish Empire in the same way that the United States won its independence from the British Empire. Their new constitution turned Texas into part of a new Mexican state. But there was no one there (well, no white people; there were plenty of natives). So Mexico encouraged immigration to Texas from the United States.

    Can you just smell the historical irony here? Soon there were too many white people crossing the Mexican border. The Mexican government thought it would lose control of the region so new laws were enacted limiting immigration into Mexico. New laws also taxed the American settlers. But that didn't stop Americans from crossing the border illegally and that didn't stop Americans from avoiding the Mexican tax man.

    The illegals in Texas, pissed off about the distant government cracking down on them, then banded together and started a revolution. What was Mexico to do when one of its states was up in arms like that? They sent in the army! Santa Anna marched his army and eventually they came to the Alamo. Who was defending that place? Why, illegals and rebels, that's who! They wouldn't surrender and were all killed in the battle.





    Glenn Beck is at the Alamo throwing a tea party. He's at a place representing (to some, I suppose) a place where illegal immigrants fought against a national government with oppressive immigration laws and lost. He's there and he's protesting government taxing and spending. Or something. Every time this douche nozzle speaks he says he's out teabagging for some new reason.

    I think it's funny, too, that he's using the Boston Tea Party as a model for his protests. Does anybody really know the goings on concerning the original Tea Party? It's as if some conservative marketing guy out there thought "hey, we need a patriotic, non-hippie kinda protest. Why not the Boston Tea Party? We'll call ourselves teabaggers." Then this artificial grassroots movement (artificial grassroots = AstroTurf) out there throwing bags of tea around to protest government spending. That's not what the original Party was all about.





    So there's this stuff, tea, and everybody loves it. I don't know why 'cause I can't stand the shit but people in the 18th Century all jizzed in their pants for it. Now the British government got in bed with the East India Trading Company (there's a long global history of government and business getting intimate at the highest levels). The law said that the Trading Company (you know them; they're the villains in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies) could only sell its tea to Great Britain proper. Not only that, but they've got to pay this huge ass tax.

    Think of the Britons living in American. They couldn't buy tea from the East India Trading Company. They had to buy it through merchants in Britain (who bought it from the Company). This made things expensive. What are enterprising British colonists to do?

    Break the law, of course! Why waste money buying that shit from Britain when you could buy it illegally from the Dutch? And that's what these colonists did. And they made good money smuggling Dutch tea into the colonies.

    But the shit hits the fan when Parliament pulls its head out of its ass. They lower the taxes they put on the East India Trading Company and even allow the tea merchants to trade directly with the colony. These evil fuckers were enacting legislation that promoted freer trade! What this did, of course, was make British tea a lot cheaper. That meant these rich Bostonians who had great fortunes based on tea smuggling stood to lose a lot of money. Guess who backed the anti-British tea protests?

    One thing led to another and soon the British had ships full of tea in Boston Harbor. A bunch of white guys dressed as Indians got on board and tossed the valuable British tea into the water. Oh, snap. Way to not boldly stand up for your rights but instead to destroy private property and shift the blame to minorities.

    So today we've got Glenn Beck at the Alamo, thousands of miles away from Boston Harbor, talking about teabagging the folks in government for spending tax money on things. There are cries of socialism but I don't think these people know what that word means. There are cries of "taxation with representation" which makes no sense to me. It was a hollow battle cry during the Revolution (lets fucking assume that Parliament had granted the American colonists the right to elect an MP; that MP would have been voted down every single time and the rich merchants in Boston knew this; thus the "taxation without representation" was just a slogan for the dredges to mindlessly chant as they protested fair tax laws that hurt the same rich merchants' bottom lines; come to think of it, just like today's Tea Party...) and it is hollow now. This whole "teabagging America" thing rings hollow to me. Fake AstroTurf shit.




    In other, more personal news, things are progressing rather well in life. This semester is almost over and I'll admit that I couldn't care less about that. I've completely checked out on school these days. I'm phoning it in. And other such metaphors. Two more weeks and I can stop worrying about it all. I'm looking forward to it.

    What else? Ha, in spite of today's fun teabagging experience I have yet to find a new girlfriend. There have been two attempts in the last two months and both didn't work out. But, hey, at least I'm dating. That's something. But like school, I'm getting pretty bored with that, too. Most of the time I'd rather just sit around on the couch and read a book or watch my roommates play video games. How lame is that?

    My diet is still going great, though. That's a big source of happiness in the Browning bedroom (I'd say household, but my household is shared by three other last names!). From 222 pounds on December 1st, 2008, to 183 pounds on April 22nd, 2009. Hot damn! I've lost 39 pounds! I now weigh less than I did when I got back from my summer in Europe in 2006. Nice. My new goal is still 175 pounds (which would mean a change from 100kg to 80kg, or 20% of my body weight lost!) and I hope to reach that number some time in May or early June. I'm taking these last few steps slowly. What I mean to say is that it's getting harder to lose the weight. I'm leveling out, here.

    A good thing about this weight loss is that I can fit into smaller clothes, clothes I have put into storage thinking I'd never wear them again. In high school I wore a 32 waist pants. It had gone up to size 40 recently. Now it's back to 34. I don't think I'll ever get back to 32 and that's okay. Why do I want to go back to high school, huh? Anyway, this just means I've got more clothes to wear (and more options for purchase at the mall!). I really, really hope I can maintain this. Since I've done this for nearly five months I'm sure I can keep it up for a bit longer.

    Hmm, that's a pretty long post. I started at about the same time Glenn Beck was on TV but now he's off and some new asshat is bitching about the liberals in this country. Wait, why am I even watching Fox News? Who put this shit on? I'm going to end things here and go turn the channel. I hope you guys out there in Internetland are having a great time!

    I figured that it would be good to get at least two posts on my Livejournal this month. Slowly, but surely, I am weaning myself from the internet's life draining social networking sites. I hope, maybe by the end of the year, to be completely free from this internet addiction I've got going on. Not an easy thing to do!

    Get this: we here at the apartment have been using free internet for some reason ever since moving in last year. We weren't paying for it but they were still sending it to our place. That is, until last night. We were cut off. First thing this morning my hardcore WoW playing roommate was out the door and off to Comcast to get our internet back. This is a guy who normally doesn't wake up until after noon (because he stays up all night raiding on WoW) and yet he rushed out to get his next internet fix. A few years ago that would have been me!

    Anyway, we'll see how the internet thing goes. In other news: I've reached my weight goal! I'm no longer technically overweight. I still have a big butt and huge thighs and tiny man boobs but I look a lot better than I did when I started this thing more than three months ago. In total, I've lost 34 pounds. I hope to lose a bit more but I don't have to. I got where I wanted to get and I'm happy to be here!

    Well, I'm done with this blog post. I'll get back here next month some time for another update (and maybe more pictures!).

    I haven't posted here in a while. That's because I'm on some sort of break from blogging. Pretty soon, if I keep this up, I'll be on a break from the internet. Giving up this internet addiction of mine is going to be one tough nut to crack but I don't see why I can't do it.
    So what's new? I'm down 30 pounds since December 1st! I weigh 192 pounds, if you can believe that. The plan is for me to start weight training and aerobics classes at the rec center when Spring Break is over. I believe the classes are called Body Sculpting and Cardio Kick. I'm mentally preparing myself to have my ass handed to me by a room full of teenage girls in much better shape than I am in.
    My renewed Project 365 is going well. I'm ten weeks into the year and haven't missed a day, yet! Instead of posting them every day I just keep them on my laptop and post them once every week or so. Just another way to keep me from the internet. I'm not going to screw up this year the way I did in 2008.
    That's about all I want to talk about on here now. I'm going to post a bunch of links to sites I've found over the last few weeks. That way I can both share them with you guys and get them off my Bookmarks list. Sounds good, no?

My Biggest Problem with Biblical Morality

Slaw of the Land: West Virginia Hot Dog Map

If Twilight Was 10 Times Shorter and 100 Times More Honest

But Michael Phelps Smoked Pot

YHWH Rules, Chemosh Drools!

Barack Obama is Tired of your Motherfucking Shit

Before You Get That Blowjob from Me, Here Are a Few Pointers...

The Crisis of Credit Visualized

Robin Hood's Oo de Lally Translated

Rotation of Earth Plunges Entire North American Continent into Darkness

    And because I have absolutely no shame I took a picture of myself on the toilet the other day. It is yet another thing I'd like to share with you folks out there in Internet Land. Happy Pi Day!