Tis good, sara.

Cass, I missed my floating appointment today because it wasn't sunny. Am depressed now.

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I just spent WAY too long wrapping my grandmother's birthday present, especially considering what I ended up with. I have no gift-appropriate containers in my house whatsoever.

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Restaurant called Doña Rosa.

Oh my... Must move so I can eat there.

No floating today? That is tragic. Where was your sun today? I want a pool. With noodles. Can you float tomorrow?

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That seems so evil, because it's hugely enticing especially to a nominally unempowered demographic.

Hello, ROTC.

But, of course, there's no backdoor draft in this country.

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Painfully cute lunches.

Of course, god bless the Japanese.

Yeah, ROTC is what it is. But the citizenship was just sort of surprising.

Our sun was trapped in the humidity, behind the clouds. We went swimming yesterday though. And I'll go tomorrow.

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I'm waiting for them to start handing out free flat screen tvs before I enlist.

And those lunches are cute. But I don't think I could eat one.

In unrelated news, why is there going to be a sequel to The Cutting Edge?

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why is there going to be a sequel to The Cutting Edge?

What's it gonna be called? The Knife Sharpener?

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BUT, as a recruiting tool? That seems so evil, because it's hugely enticing especially to a nominally unempowered demographic.

FWIW, I never felt unempowered when I joined the Navy. As a matter of fact, they gave me over 2 years of electronics training and paid me to learn it. When I got out of the service in 1993 I was making approximately $15 an hour as an avionics technician. I've been working for the same company now for 9 years and am still not making that much money for similar work requiring the same skills. Plus, the GI Bill helped pay my way through school, I only took out one loan the entire time I went to college.

FIL was in the Air Force for 20 years and never became a citizen. Then again, he didn't want to either.

Some do, some don't. When I was in the service the requirement was that you serve during a "time of war," that second clause about 3 years must be new. I knew a number of Filipino servicemen who were upset because they enlisted after 1975 (the end of the Vietnam War) who were coming up on 20 years and who couldn't request instant citizenship because there had been no "time of war" since then. Fortunately for them, I believe that the Gulf War was eventually designated as such and gave them the means to do so. Some of them didn't care because a military retirement was very good money where they came from, so planned on going back home when they got out.

My grandfather was one of those who took advantage of it during WWI. He'd only been in the U.S. for 5 years at that point and his English wasn't very good. One of the bonuses of getting naturalized through military service is that you don't have to tqke the citizenship test, you just get it handed to you.

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I never felt unempowered when I joined the Navy.

Fair enough. And undoubtedly when my dad enlisted for his 20 years of service, he didn't either.

But the recruitment that I'm seeing is happening in very poor, very immigrant-dominated urban high schools. Of course the military is a good choice, at least seemingly, because there aren't a ton of other options. and if you can get citizenship too, then double yeah. But we are in hostilities now and the likelihood of these kids getting sent to Iraq are high and that seems to change the stakes a bit.

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Watching a rerun of the Daily Show from the other night and cursing the people on this board who are responsible for my getting the "Hot Karl" joke.

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