School is just okay. Being a sophomore is definitely different. I open up the day with band, then either English or Earth Science for eighty minutes, lunch (yes, at ten o'clock in the morning), Spanish (which has been simple so far because the regular teacher is out sick and our substitute does not know a single word of the language), Global (my teacher is hilarious!) and then Chamber Choir. After Chamber Choir comes either a study hall (where I am right now) or PE. Then, the dreaded Geometry. I have found it easier to focus this year in math. I already got a 100% on our first test, and was the only student to receive said grade (YES! I put it on the fridge! xD).

He-boss: Hi my hero.
Me: Hi. (laughing) What a nice thing to say.
He-boss: Well you my hero, most of the time.
Me: (still laughing)  well, yeah maybe maybe
He-boss: you are.
Me: (giggling) Yeah, I guess so… ok, what do you want?
He-boss: Can you do me a favour?
Me: Yeah, sure. What?
He-boss: I have two routers that need to be sent, express over night. The client needs new ones.
Me: oh yeah, they lost the one they already got. Weed-head told me.
He-boss: Can you take care of it?
Me: of course. I can do it. I have to go to the post-office anyway, so just toss them over to me and I’ll do it.
He-boss: good. It has to be express over night. I don’t have the time to do it, so it’s nice that you can do it. You can go half an hour earlier or something if you want to.
Me: mhm. I’ll go.

My hero? It’s so obvious that he was sucking up prior to his question. No camouflage at all!

I wonder if he thinks I’m buying into it; that I fall for it. I don’t. Not at all. I think it’s nice and funny that he does it, but it doesn’t affect what I do or don’t do.

Do I say that to him? Of course not, that I keep a secret. It feels good to be called a hero, even if he only does it to suck up. So why let him know I don’t buy into his sweet talk, when the risk is that I lose the positive feedback?

Me: Yeah! I love AFI! But I heard that the lead singer is a douche bag.

J: He's my cousin.

Reactions:

Me: Oh, well... that's just what I heard. My maths teacher interviewed him years ago, maybe he has changed since then.

Sarcastic Me: Ooooh, suuuuure. What ever you say. But I'm sure he's nice when he's around "family".

Suck-up Me: Really?! That's soooo cool!!! How often do you see him? Is he nice? What's he like in really life? Does he like... blah blah blah.

Phyllis: I still think he's a douche bag.

Bitch Me: Oh, really? Hmmm... I didn't know that douche baggery was a dominent trait. It must run in the family.

FYI, I don't hate AFI or anything like that. In fact, I really like them as a band. I was just trying to make conversation and this is what came up.

North Korea admitted to sending engineers to military- related and other facilities in Syria during its recent talks with the United States over its nuclear program, diplomatic sources in New York said Friday.

Pyongyang, however, denied its involvement in Syrian nuclear development, according to the sources.

The dispatch of engineers and other personnel for bilateral cooperation, including on the military front, started in around 2000, North Korea told the United States in their talks from the end of last year to January.

The North also exported materials to Syria, the sources said.

Pyongyang claimed most of the personnel worked at civilian facilities, according to the sources.

As Power Line remarks:

Sure, that's plausible. Maybe the Syrians wanted to learn about North Korea's industry-leading flat-panel television technology. Who wants Japanese engineers when you can get access to North Korea's? Or perhaps the North Korean engineers were dieticians--human engineers, so to speak--who could teach North Korea's techniques for making each generation shorter than the preceding one, with a shorter life span, too.

Syria may not be a technological powerhouse, but the idea that it would want North Korean engineering expertise, or North Korean "materials," relating to anything other than nuclear weapons is laughable.

True. More laughable is the fact that in 2000, Clinton was still in office and was six years removed from the 1994 Agreed Framework that, according to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's statements to Congress in 1998, had "frozen North Korea's dangerous nuclear-weapons program."

Turns out that the rogue state secretly started a uranium-enrichment program almost as soon as the Agreed Framework was signed. Despite this information becoming public in 1998, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported that ...

President Clinton's administration began thawing relations in the late 1990s, and in October 2000, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright became the first senior-level U.S. government official to visit Kim [Jong Il] in North Korea.

Their talks lasted two days, and before leaving, Albright presented the 5-foot-3 Kim a gift – an authentic NBA basketball autographed by Michael Jordan.

In early 2003 North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which it had been actively violating for over half a decade. In 2005 it declared that it possessed nuclear weapons.

Now, North Korea is admitting to collaborating with Syria, although it assures us it is just routine and nothing to be concerned about. Given its continued history of deception, cheating on agreements and violating of treaties, is there any reason to trust that explanation? The answer is obviously no.

Make sure you get this right: In 2000, while Albright and Clinton were giving away sports paraphernalia to a murderous dictator, said dictator was continuing a nuclear program that had been in full swing for many years in violation of a signed agreement, and was also beginning to aid, even militarily, a known terrorist-coddling state in Syria.

Since then, hard evidence, including a test of a nuclear weapon and multiple admissions on behalf of Kim's regime as to its nuclear program, has come to light that completely ridicules the Clinton Administration's claims to any form of success in its dealings with North Korea.

Is any of that decade of debacles part of Hillary Clinton's 35 years of experience? I'd think so, considering this photo.

And where was Obama when his plan to suck up to every enemy of the US was experimented with and proved a failure? Is he so naive that he really thinks he can achieve this, with full compliance from our enemies and the likes of Ahmadinejad?

It's time for liberals and Democrats obsessed with appeasement to recognize the truth. Tough diplomacy works. Bush II named North Korea a member of the Axis of Evil, after all, and look what happened.

Howard Kurtz provides a candid assessment of the stunning media bias in the Clinton-Obama race. Conservatives often bemoan the lack of fair media treatment, but they have nothing over Hillary Clinton. How would you like to run in a race where reporters bring their children to your opponent’s rallies and dance to his tunes (literally)?The prospect of a post-partisan, minority candidate is too much for the media to resist. Does this mean the coverage of Clinton is unduly harsh? Perhaps a more accurate assessment is that she is receiving the proper amount of scrutiny for a frontrunning candidate who has botched her campaign while Obama receives virtually no critical coverage. If he gets the nomination we might hope to get more exacting coverage (or at least, for starters, a substantive interview on his foreign policy views), but it seems more likely that the media rooting will only intensify when the opponent is a Republican, even one widely respected by the media.

Anyone else think that last line is referring to McCain?

Rubin is dead on, both on how the general election will be covered--make no mistakes about it--and that Hillary is at the wrong end of the most biased news coverage I've seen. But I'm not so sure that a "proper amount of scrutiny" naturally entails ignoring completely the obvious farming of illegal donations while simultaneously reminiscing about how the only reason Hillary is where she is now is because "her husband messed around." Then again, maybe in today's media world, where news is comprised more of sensationalist, "gotcha" moments and less by actual reporting, maybe it does.

Still, let's all remember the good old days (Facebook readers viewing the imported feed can watch the embedded video at this link):

Was that a blush?

It is important to realize, like in the first part of the "reminiscing" linked clip above, just how quickly the media will be sucking up to Hillary if she (legitimately) ends up pulling it off over Obama. It will be there tonight if she somehow takes Wisconsin. The media may appreciate a certain renegade Republican Senator every now and then, but they are still Democrats first.

Which will we see first? A truly post-partisan politician or a post-partisan media?

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am writing in response to the _________ job listed at __________. Rather than subject you to a boring cover letter in which I engage in and display my uncanny ability to suck up, I will get right to the exact points as to why you should hire me - besides the obvious one of me being pretty much the greatest candidate you will ever see for this particular position.

Reasons Why You Should Hire Me:

1.   I have extensive experience in establishing, coordinating, creating, developing, implementing and executing.
2.   My computer skills include and are pretty much limited to: Spider Solitaire, Instant Messenger and iTunes.
3.   I can maintain professional relationships without the use of sex or guns.
4.   I have never had a microchip implanted in my head. Or at least I don’t think I have ever had a microchip implanted in my head.
5.   While on business trips, I never steal people’s leftover food outside of their hotel rooms. Except that one time, but I was super drunk.
6.   I serve as a great liaison between employees and the facsimile machine.
7.   One time I oversaw something. I think it was a project.
8.   My Myspace and Facebook profiles are set to private, so only my friends can see my naked keg-stand photos. Though, I have to admit, I look really good.
9.   My attention to detail is outstandering.
10. I have researched, analyzed and monitored financial and demographic factors to capitalize on market opportunities and minimize effects of competitive activity.
11. The above displays my ability to use Google in order to blatantly plagiarize so that it seems like I know what I am talking about.
12. I live in Maine, so I am realistic about the salary for this position. I realize that if this job were in New York City I would be making enough to purchase a one-bedroom apartment, some really nice black clothes and a time-share in the Hamptons, but since I live in Maine I will make enough to barely cover my rent and an occasional PBR at happy hour prices.

Thanks for your consideration and for hiring me without putting us both through the absurd interview process. I would love to tell you all about the last time I had to work with a group of people to achieve a common goal, but I secretly hate groups of people as well as goals.  I really just want this job so I can use your postage meter for free.

Sincerely,

________________

"After the speech, McCain was asked by an audience member if he was 'sucking up to the religious right.' He drew laughs by responding: 'What's wrong with sucking up to everybody?''

McCain has been sucking up to the likes of Jerry Fallwell and the Discovery Institute in Seattle as of late. My good friend, Life Long Harborite, would call that "swinging on the meat".