Ron Paul!

So, on Sunday night Rachel and I visited Teagle and Ben and played Killer Bunnies with them. Basically it's a card game where you try to kill the opposing people's bunnies and keep yours alive while gaining carrots (including hopefully the magical game winning carrot) and using all sorts of ridiculous weaponry to win (like mini black holes, ebola, and anthropomorphic flamethrowers).

On Monday we headed out to Lake Cedar to swim and then went to Sebastian Joe's Ice Cream Parlor for dessert. And man oh man, can they make ice cream. I ordered two scoops of Chocolate Coyote, which is chocolate ice cream mixed with cinnamon and cayenne pepper. Soooo freaking delicious. That night we finally saw the elusive Karen and played Heroscape with the crew at Russell's. It was a lot of fun that saw Rachel and I destroying each other with robo rats, zombies, orcs riding T-Rexes and the Deathwalker 8000 eliminating an entire mindless horde in one turn.

That night I had lots of trouble getting to sleep, so I spent most of today in a kind of a daze. Because of this I ended up sleeping through part of the Ron Paul convention, which I had gotten free tickets for at the Liberty Parade. After a quick dinner I hopped a bus for downtown and got there in time to hear Ron's speech. It was pretty good- I agree with a lot of his sentiments, particularly in regards to limiting the power of the executive branch, the futility of the war on drugs, the overprescription of prescription drugs and the need for peace rather than war, but I'm a little fuzzy on how exactly he intends to do these things... as well as some of his other suggestions. I'm going to look into it before I pass judgment, but some of the things he mentioned seemed a little far fetched or not particularly well thought through. Anyway, here are some pics from the convention:



edit: Oh wait, I forgot a hilarious anecdote that involves Dr. Paul's introducer, Barry Goldwater Jr. I'm not sure what exactly he said this in reference to, but here goes. "So, there's this backwoods farmer who is a little eccentric and keeps really good care of his pond and goes out every day with a pail to take care of it. So, one day he goes into his barn, grabs his pail, and heads out to the pond, only to find three women swimming in it. The women shriek and swim to the opposite end of the pond and say 'We're not coming out while you're standing there!' So, the farmer shakes his head and says 'Now, I didn't come out to this pond to see y'all swimming naked, and I certainly didn't come out to this pond to see y'all getting out of it naked.' He raises his pail and says 'What I did come out to this pond to do was feed my alligators.'"

Yeah, kinda random, eh?

Until next time...

As early as 1865 or '66 I had had this curious experience: that whereas up to that time I had considered myself a Republican, I was converted to a no-party independence by the wisdom of a rabid Republican. This was a man who was afterward a United States Senator, and upon whose character rests no blemish that I know of, except that he was the father of the William R. Hearst of to-day, and therefore grandfather of Yellow Journalism - that calamity of calamities.
- Autobiographical dictation by Mark Twain, January 24, 1906