The History of Liberia

After Jim Crow laws were passed stating that no blacks were safe in the United States, even in free states, some of the founding fathers of the U.S. (most prominently Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner) decided that black Americans needed somewhere they could really feel safe if they were freed, so why not Africa? A team of Americans , including Thomas Jefferson, Henry Clay and Paul Cuffe, a Native American slave ship captain, secretly sent a ship to Africa, taking with them 33 African Americans and settled an unmapped city in West Africa called "Freetown." Over the next sixty years, slave ships going to pick up more slaves would secretly ship escaped or freed blacks back to Africa, slowly populating the secret civilization called the ACS (American Colonization Society) and helping them establish a shadow government in Africa. When the Civil War seemed inevitable in the late 1840s, many Southerners who had been part of the ACS movement started sending boats FULL of blacks over to Freeville.

When Great Britain discovered this secret colony, they made an attempt to annex it as part of the United Kingdom. They figured that the United States would be afraid to admit what they had been building and would abandon the colony, giving the UK prime coastal land in West Africa. Instead, the United States officially granted the ACS their independence and renamed them Liberia. Five states—New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Maryland, and the southern state of Virginia, who founded the ACS—all pitched in interest free loans to the Liberian government so they could fund an army. In nearly bankrupted the states, but they felt morally obliged to act.

In 1847, Liberia drafted their constitution and was founded as a free Republic. They renamed Freeville to "Monroeville," in honor of James Monroe, who had raised over $100,000 for the colony while he was sitting President of the United States. Though it's just as rife with conflict and war as any African country, it is still a sovereign nation, still in good standing with the Anglican world, and this year elected their first female President, in an election which was completely free of corruption, and are on their way to drafting a balanced budget.

So you tell me that American History isn't just as fascinating as European.

Losing My Edge

You know, I started this blog so that I'd have an outlet to say all the subversive, offensive shit that pops up in my head, shit that I can't say when my name's attached to it, so I can spew anonymous vile into the internet. Sadly, I don't appear to have been expelling my demons properly as of late, and there's plenty to expel.

Rather than taking out this rage right now, however, I leave you with this simple thought: if a Pro-life Hebrew has a vasectomy, doesn't he have to forgive Hitler? I mean, he's killing a hell of a lot more Jews (no pun intended) than Genocide ever did.

Finally, a cure

Problem Solved

I have a solution for our economy. All the people who have invested in Morgan Stanley, AIG, and Bank of America get all their money back, cash, and the three companies are shut down and every executive is let go without severance. All regular employees get one year’s pay. Then the government uses the money they make from auctioning off those three banks to create jobs of real value to society.

In a Portland with no guns...

Carwash incident

We're still America

Maybe it's actually a spaceship!

at 2:49

Mature as I may be

None of the memories from my teenage years seem unappealing to me. I would have no problem sitting in the back of my friend's truck, listening to punk music, driving down the road to a kegger where we would take acid and watch Teletubbies. If I could go back and do it all over again, I would make more mistakes the second time around.

I am not making this up

One of the assigned responsibilities of our “tier one,” as she is called, is maintaining printer supplies and such. I walk up to the printer to print off one page, and she’s just staring blankly at the printer. She looks at me and asks, “did you print something?”

“Not yet,” I reply. “My job’s in queue.”

“Well, it’s not working for some reason,” she says. I look at the screen on the printer and >TONER EMPTY: REPLACE CARTRIDGE< is blinking. So I point out that there’s no toner in the printer. “I see that,” she says as she rolls her eyes, “I didn’t expect that that would stop it from printing!”

“Yep,” I say. “It can’t print without any ink.”

“Well, the toner cartridges are right over there,” she points, and walks away. I’m wearing all white today, but I need that printout, so I grab the toner and carefully replace it (we have one of those old printers that blow out a plume of toner whenever it’s replaced). I close up the printer and print the queue.

My supervisor walks up and looks at the printer. “Oh,” she says, “did someone get this working again?”

I shrug, “we just needed to replace the toner, so I swapped it out.”

She laughs. “Yeah, I saw that it said replace cartridge. I asked J.J. to do it, but he didn’t know how, and I don’t know how. I figure there had to be instructions somewhere.”

I look at her, trying not to make any sort of judgmental face. “You just swap it out from the toner tray.

She rolls her eyes, “well, I know that. I know that the toner goes in this tray right here—” she says as she opens it while it’s printing, causing a loud XKKRYNGH sound as seven sheets of paper get jammed up inside. “Whoops,” she says. “I’ll go get J.J. and see if he knows how to fix it.”

Side note: J.J. is our accountant. He is not our tier one.

I volunteer to un-jam the printer, and I calmly open it out and start weeding out all the jammed paper. At this point, the tier one comes back in and sees me pulling things out of the printer. She’s visibly upset. “I already called the service guy,” she says, “exactly so this doesn’t happen. You shouldn’t be trying to swap out the toner yourself.”

“The toner wasn’t the problem,” I say. “We just got a paper jam. It’s easy to fix.” I pull out the last piece of paper, close up the printer, and re-send the queue. I grab the one page of paper that I need, while the other 50 print back out, and I leave.

I pass J.J. on my way out of the printer room. I hear him talking to my supervisor behind me. “Oh,” he says, “did you get the toner cartridge replaced?”

“Yeah, Robert did it,” the supervisor replied. “I guess you just have to put it on this tray here—” XKKRYNGH!!!

So now the printer’s “out of order.” I’ll pull out the paper next time I need to print something. Which will probably be Wednesday.

On the other hand, we do have two printers…

Lunches

I tend to reminisce about lunch. If I had the means, I would love to go eat lunch at all of the following places:

• The lunchroom of my junior high
• The 2nd floor hallway of my high school in Idaho
• The lunchroom of my high school in Europe
• The dorm cafeteria of my college
• Old Chicago, my old stomping ground
• The kitchen of my quad apartment from my upperclassmen years
• The kitchen of my best friend's dad's old house
• Hot Cake House in Portland at 1 a.m.

Some of these are easy. Hot Cake House, for one. The "dorm cafeteria" doubles as a functioning restaurant, and I don't think it's changed all that much. If I went back to Europe for any significant amount of time, I'm sure it'd be easy to eat there as well.

I can't really go back to eating on the floor of my high school, and I think they'd frown on me hanging out at the Junior High. Obviously, my apartment and my friend's dad's house have been sold to other people; even if I randomly ended up eating at the new tenants' residence, it would be indistinguishable. Similarly, I actually tried going back to Old Chicago, but it was totally remodeled, and anyway, the whole appeal was being on a first name basis with literally the entire staff, all the way up to the owner (who has since sold the joint).

It seems like a silly thing to reminisce about, but I get all emotional just writing about it, and to this day I have dreams, where I walk down those gray stairs into the basement of my school, take a left into the little dining hall, and put my money down in that little window that goes to the kitchen, and they hand me my macaroni and half tea/half sugar, and I walk to the back table and pull out my math book and work on my homework.

Sounds like a dreadful thing to dream about, doesn't it? Well, it so happens that I got a bout of insomnia the last couple days, and you know how I fixed it? I laid in my bed, and pictured that little dining hall in my mind. Within half an hour, I was asleep and on my way there.

So I guess I can go back.

Morbid

So, I'm going through my financial paperwork, and realize something: as of December 17th of this year, my life insurance covers a $50,000 benefit if I commit suicide. I always thought that suicide was an instant disqualifier, but I guess not. Of course, it's well over double that if I just die. Still, it's nice to know that the Cobain option is on the table if things get really bad.

Do-over

God, let me relive the second half of the 1990s. They told me it would be the best years of my life, but I didn't believe them and now it's too late. I will tell my kids, but they won't believe me either.

On second thought, don't. Those five years were so wonderful and magical because of that strange thing that happens in a young man's chemistry, where the colors are brighter, the emotions are stronger, and every day lasts a lifetime. Then it seems that the chemicals drain out, leaving the cast that you've molded from the impressionable years.

Tell me, then, what it takes to refill the cast. There has to be something to trigger that part of my brain again. There has to be more than this.

When Disclaimers Go To Far

I am eating peanut butter crackers for breakfast, and on the side of the package they felt obligated to write "Caution: Contains Wheat, Peanuts."

I would think it more apt to write a caution if it in fact did not contain either wheat or peanuts. Given that those are the two main ingredients.

Statutory Rape

A moment of non-political correctness

My dream is to one day speak to a Floridan under 70 who doesn't have a Cuban accent.

Last Lap

As of today, exactly 6 months remain until the wedding!

Overheard at the office

ACTUAL QUOTE FROM A PHONE CONVERSATION: (note: This phone call took place in a call center in Portland, Oregon) "It's a small town, you've never heard of it. No, I'm talking to you from India, I just have an excellent accent. Now what is it you want from me?"

It's the little things

I love typing the number 489687 in ten-key. Try it sometime.

all right, look

My boss can't be critical of me for implying I took hallucinatory narcotics in college when SHE was the one who brought in a lavender and white polka dotted stuffed dog toy that barked boingy giggles. You heard me.