July 2nd, 2004
Posted by fad at 4:05pm
I hate computers.
Posted by fad at 2:36pm
Attention St. Louis area peoples. Rumour has it a visitor shall be gracing us with his presence next week sometime. Things are still a bit sketchy, but consider this your warning to look out for the blog bash signal fires to be lit for next weekend sometime.
Posted by fad at 2:16pm
In sports, they call it the "contract year". That's the last year of a player's contract, so they try to put up the best numbers they can to get the best payout with their next contract. Something similar is happening with the Missouri gubernatorial race.
State agencies spent up to $1.2 million on questionable promotional items, including thousands of bumper stickers, chip clips and rub-on tattoos, during the past two years, according to an audit released Friday by State Auditor Claire McCaskill.The audits are a little more strict, maybe over zealous, this time out because McCaskill is running for the Democratic nomination against the sitting governor.
Posted by fad at 1:37pm
Ok, what the fuck?
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell donned a hard hat and tucked a hammer in his belt Friday to perform a version of the Village People's hit "YMCA" at the conclusion of Asia's largest security meeting - which tradition says ends with a night of skit and song.Skits and song? This is considered international diplomacy? Now, a drag review I could understand, but not this middle school stuff.
Powell danced alongside five other U.S. officials dressed in fancy dress and blasted out a version of the 1970s disco classic to the delight of foreign ministers from across the Asia-Pacific and Europe.
[...]
"President Bush, he said to me, Colin I need you to run the department of state. We are between a rock and a hard place," Powell and his colleagues sang to the tune of the disco classic.
Posted by fad at 1:03pm
Hey, it's Friday, so that means it's time to indulge in meaningless, boring lists. So, here are the Top 5 Fireworks Memories That Don't Involve Severe Physical Injury Or Significant Property Damage.
- In the late '80s/early '90s, after a baseball game at Dodger Stadium during which we sat in the outfield bleachers, they had all of us in the bleachers come down on to the field to watch the fireworks. I got to stand right behind second base with thousands of others still in the stands staring down at us, jealous.
- At a friend's friend's house in Green Bay, WI, very drunk guys showed up with a makeshift mortar and some shell fireworks. During one launch attempt, the mortar fell over shooting the fireworks directly at us as we ran away from them. Flaming balls went whizzing by; one friend had to try to leap over one.
Bonus story from same night: They also had quarter and half sticks of dynamite to toss into the bay. They were all right handed, but lit the sticks with their right shoulder to the bay. This meant, they had to turn all the way around -- in a drunken twist -- and then throw. How no one lost a hand is one of those mysteries of alcohol. - Every fireworks show in Riverside, CA. They launched them off Mt. Rubidoux, a dry, brush covered foothill just outside of town. It wasn't officially the 4th of July until the mountain caught fire.
- Last year, watching incredibly drunk people (noticing a theme?) light off rockets -- often times barely getting clear, so close that they had soot on their foreheads -- using a decorative cabbage (there is...or was such a thing) as the launch site until it was destroyed.
- When I was little, all the residents in the cul-de-sac across the street would gather all their fireworks for the night. The firing was led by someone's crazy uncle who always showed up in his beat-up truck, the bed filled with fireworks. One year, he lit a Roman candle, but it didn't fire. So he actually walked up to it and looked down the barrel. Seeing nothing amiss, he stood up just as it started firing away. That's still the closest I've ever seen someone come to taking one of those in the face.
Posted by fad at 12:48pm
Marlon Brando is dead at 80. As seems to be the sentiment I'm seeing everywhere, it's a wonder he made it this long.
Posted by fad at 10:50am
I don't think this says anything about the media at large, but it's just a little interesting. A friend of mine, about a decade ago, created a project that was rather popular and well known in the early internet. It's still in use, with many homages, to this day with some.
In today's LA Times, as part of a larger article, his project gets a few paragraphs of write up. They mention his name, they link the site where the project is housed, and quote from it quite a bit. But at no time did they bother to contact him at all about it. When I sent him the link this morning, it was the first he'd heard about the article. It's not like he's hard to find; he puts his email address on the page to which they linked.
I guess I just find that a little odd. They didn't need a quote or approval from him, but I would have thought, with the other work done, they might have shot him a, "Hey, we're including this in our article." message.
(I'm being purposely vague about it for various reasons you'll just have to cope with not knowing.)
Posted by fad at 10:13am
Reading something like this -- just this, completely out of context -- before having any caffeine makes me doubt reality.
A wheelchair-bound chihuahua from the US is on a tour of Japan with his owner to tell his story of hope.That sounds like the description for a seriously fucked up short story.
Posted by fad at 9:52am
Glancing at ye olde logges this morning, I noticed that this site, along with almost every other site in creation, was nominated for some Celebrating the Underblogger thingy. Since someone took the time to do that, it is only polite to say "thanks". So, um, thanks!
Posted by fad at 6:25am
My senior year of high school, we played in a basketball tournament in Las Vegas. It was as fun as it could be for a heavily supervised 17 year old who hurt his good ankle and could barely walk but was still playing two games a day (walking the Strip on the last night, a couple friends had to assist me). For the van ride up, a friend and I logged into a BBS with his mighty new 1400 BAUD modem, downloaded the Monty Python and the Holy Grail and printed it out for everyone to read during the drive. It would be another year before I actually saw the movie, but after that drive I had the script damn near memorized.
This comes up because, while considering something else, I was reminded of one game during that tournament. Things were not going well during the game, but we were still winning somehow. It was just one of those struggle games where you are actually coming out ahead, but it doesn't feel like it. You're working extra hard, struggling, but don't feel like you can fully get a hand on the game. One point, late in the game, I'm hustling like crazy on defense chasing this one guy around. He swings over to the left-side baseline. I lull him into thinking he has an open shot, then jump in and swat it away as he shoots. It was a wicked block, one of those momentum changers. A moment that could make a team think it finally has the game. One of the refs was right there in perfect position, and he let it go. But, from behind came a whistle.
The ref standing at midcourt, out of position, with multiple players between him and the play decided my block was actually a foul. He walked over to the scorers table and reported my number. As we lined up for the free throws, the ref, who had been right there in position, says to me, "Sorry, kid. Looked pretty clean to me." Which was nice in a way, but it didn't matter. The other ref made the official report, and that foul was on my record. In the paper the next day wasn't "great block called foul"; it was just a digit higher than it should be in my foul count.
I thought of this incident this morning thinking about what it must be like in Iraq. You're struggling away, you're mostly winning, but you still don't think you have complete control of the situation. Things happen, you know what happened, people there and around know what happened, but it's some reporter out of position (for just one example), relying on people who are trying to be in the way, who files the report. And his words are the official version. That must be frustrating on a scale some 17 year old punk getting a cheap foul could never understand.
Posted by fad at 6:22am
July 1st, 2004
This makes me angry.
UPDATE: CD found. But now I cannot find my "Brothers Karamazov" copy.
This makes me more gassy than angry.
UPDATE II - Pufnstuf's Revenge: Spelling corrected for those who demand real words that make sense.
Posted by fad at 10:44pm
Looking at the picture with this story I realized someone needs to do a Jack Valenti version of The Hypnotoad (all hail!)
*
Posted by fad at 3:49pm
Science gives you ladies an excuse to lush out in your later years.
The moderate drinkers - who drank an average of eight alcohol units a week - had significantly denser bones than those who consumed very little.Now in some cases an "alcohol unit" will be a glass of wine (white zin cuz you're classy!), or it may be a plastic jug of whatever vodka is on the bottom shelf at the store. I leave to each to decide for herself.
Posted by fad at 1:49pm
Post topics considered and rejected:
- Stabbed again at my long post about Joy Division's "Closer", but chose to let it lie.
- A hi-larious post trying to explain the links between Harry Potter and Charlie Manson (starting with the scars). I tells ya, it's a crying shame I decided not to share that bit of genius with the world. Fleah.
- Discussion about Linux distributions, especially the nearly totalitarian nature of the Debian distribution. Just plain too deep geek for this place.
- And this one which I think I'll type up anyway:
They say -- and they being..well, it's best not to type their names out loud. An awful curse awaits those who name them. -- that a blog is a like a conversation. In my case, I agree, though not in the same sense. This site is like me trying to have conversations with people. I'm terrible at it. Like I explained with my inability to make phone calls, part of it is my conviction that no one wants to hear from me, but part is also because as I'm dialing it crashes in that I have no idea what to say. This is because there really is nothing to me. I'm completely devoid of anything other than reaction and cheap jokes.
Every morning when I sit at the blog, I can't think of a damn thing to say. I need a "conversation starter" like a silly news story. But even then, I find I don't actually say anything. It's all just one line stupid jokes that anyone could think of, and everyone probably already has.
Which sucks. I actually love to write. I want to be a writer, but that's rather hard to do when one has nothing to say, or everything one says has already been said. A million times. And better. And sometimes in other languages. But never in Klingon.
Anyway, back to your scheduled day.
Posted by fad at 7:22am
Need a break at work? Take a little time to play everybody's favorite new game: Dog Toy or Marital Aid.
UPDATE: Use the name of the game to determine for yourself if it's safe for where you work.
Posted by fad at 7:15am
Dropping the "common good" schtick for a bit (you can thank me later), I used "no one" in the first two posts, and it got me thinking a little. Don't worry, I won't make a habit of it.
I've seen that word (phrase?) spelled "noone" as well as "no one". I remember the first time I really noticed the two different ways. It was in college reading some poem I didn't understand made doubly worse because of the "noone" in there.
I think we've all had those moments when a word, often a common one, suddenly does not look right. Something seems wrong with it, the spelling must be off or maybe it doesn't really exist. That was me facing that "noone". For some reason, since it was a poem, and they sometimes enlist goofy and olde timey spellings, I thought maybe the writer was trying to Chaucer away "noon" at me.
No matter how much I looked at the word, my brain would not split it into its syllables. It wasn't until someone was forced to read it out loud to the class that I finally got it. The line made a little more sense. Of course I still didn't understand the poem, though. Knowing what a word is doesn't stop me from being a fucking moron. Since then I've noticed, or perhaps stereotyped in my own mind, that "noone" is used more often in arty setting, and "no one" is the common way.
So, I'm curious, is it "noone" or "no one" for you?
Posted by fad at 7:07am
In more common good news, the story below reminds me of when I used to live in a town in Wisconsin. The mayor and city council (or whatever it was called) got us hooked on to some Tree City America (again, or whatever it was called) thing. This meant that nobody was allowed to remove a tree from their property without going through a spendy and lengthy permit process after which you still weren't guaranteed to get said permit. Also, if memory served, if you removed a tree, you had to plant a new one so that the tree population remained static, or something. The only out on replanting was if the tree fell over naturally.
Well, you can guess what happened. After people realized the scam of the permit process, they found other means. It was amazing how many trees "fell down" after every good summer storm.
Posted by fad at 6:55am
Speaking of the common good, the happiest good of them all, the commonly good King County in Washington suggests the inevitable in property regulations.
Known as the 65-10 Rule, it calls for landowners to set aside 65 percent of their property and keep it in its natural, vegetative state. According to the rule, nothing can be built on this land, and if a tree is cut down, for example, it must be replanted. Building anything is out of the question.The 10 part of the 65-10 rule says you can only actually build on 10% of your common good land. So, while only 65% is required to become overgrown brush, effectively 90% of your "property" is under the common good control of the state.
But supporters and environmentalists say personal property rights do not trump the rights of a larger community to save the eco-systemHow soon will we hear that our personal rights to choose the occupation of our choosing are trumped by the rights of the larger community to have our talents put to use in a means that best support it?
Posted by fad at 6:47am
McDonald's has introduced an innovative new way to fight obesity.
[A woman] found the two-inch long toad in a takeout salad bought at a McDonald's in Hanson on June 16.I hereby declare my intention to get McDonald's salads declared as wildlife refuges. McDonald's must continue to make them, citizens will be required to continue buying them, but no one will be allowed to actually eat them.
[O]nce regular McDonald's customers, [they] have stopped going to the restaurant.Hey, it's for the common good. The greatest good of them all.
Posted by fad at 6:38am
June 30th, 2004
Posted by fad at 11:46pm
Bleah. This has been one of those weeks where I never can figure out what day of the week it is. I've been thinking it's a day a head all week, and it's annoying as hell.
Posted by fad at 6:00pm
Oh boy. Since I have so much respect for debates, I can't wait for this.
Dean, the former Democratic presidential hopeful who attracted legions of liberal followers before his bid fizzled out, will debate Nader for 90 minutes on July 9 before a studio audience.Extra bonus: It's sponsored and moderated by NPR! Break out your soft jazz horns and guitar, sit way back from your microphone and get ready for 90 excruciating minutes that you need to pretend to like because it makes you an enlightened person. Hopefully they'll follow up that excitement with 90 minutes of John Kerry reading soup recipes.
Posted by fad at 5:55pm
Wacky teacher stories continue.
A schoolteacher has been suspended in Zimbabwe for allegedly giving pupils the choice of being caned or suckling her breasts.Wow....rough choice. One suspects she isn't as hot as yesterday's teacher, though.
[...]
The boy claimed he was asked to choose between suckling the teacher's breasts or receiving 100 strokes of the cane for being noisy.
The boy chose to suckle the teacher's breasts, as did 14 others, according to the newspaper.That's a lot of disciplining.
Posted by fad at 5:22pm
When Gallant robs a bank, he always is sure to actually get in the bank. Meanwhile Goofus is overzealous about his disguise.
The Farmer's State Bank of Versailles installed a door-locking system, which requires customers to be individually buzzed in, after a holdup on Feb. 13."Come on! It's prescription! I have to wear it or I'll die. Let me in. I'll be your friend!"
So when bank employees saw a man wearing a stocking mask approach the door Tuesday morning, they wouldn't let him in.
Posted by fad at 5:20pm
Things like this should be punished Airplane! style. You sit in an airplane seat while all the passengers get to line up for the chance the beat the hell out of you for a minute.
A lovesick man forced a plane into an emergency landing by shouting "Bomb! Bomb!" soon after take-offA broken leg is a good start, I guess.
[...]
But the hoax attacker - who later said he was upset that his wife would not leave Germany with him - broke his leg jumping onto the tarmac after landing.
The Turkish owned Free Bird Airbus A320 took off for Turkey on Tuesday but turned around during the scare only minutes into the flight.Freeeeeeeeeee Biiiiiirrrrrrrrd!!!!
Posted by fad at 1:51pm
Seven years of flight all comes down to tonight.
The Cassini spacecraft is closing in fast on its destination, Saturn, and mission officials say it is all set to apply its rocket brakes on Wednesday eveningAnd, no, the rhyme above was not intentional. But I have been getting a lot of spam lately for a $10,000 Amateur Poetry Contest (and some for amateur porn, but those usually don't involve contests). I should submit one of these gems.
[...]
A 96-minute rocket firing, considered the riskiest maneuver of the mission, is to begin at 10:36 p.m. Eastern time as the spacecraft comes up from underneath the planet on the sunlit side of its broad system of rings. It will be shortly after midnight before the fate of the mission is known.
Posted by fad at 11:32am
Should I be nervous that someone at the Department of Homeland Security keeps hitting an old archive page here? Whoever it is, got here by this search:
"Matter of" "9th Circuit" December 2003 interpretation "patriot act" terrorism terrorist court
At least we know someone there is working against terrorism. Or the 9th Circuit.
Posted by fad at 11:00am
Looks like it's overdue for another Wacking Day.
A man found a slithery surprise Sunday when a ball python stuck its head out from between his legs while he was driving a rental car Sunday.Amazingly, he didn't crash the car.
"Before he left he told the officer that he was going to expect a free car rental," Radovan said.As well as a lifetime of "snake between my legs" jokes.
Posted by fad at 9:41am
The right-wing and Bush-Cheney supporters' attempts to help Nader get on the ballot is annoying. While I could see the glee at discussing it and thinking about it, actually doing it is too cynical for even me.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington planned to file its complaint Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission. It says the Oregon Family Council and Citizens for a Sound Economy violated election laws last week by telephoning people and urging them to help Nader get on Oregon's ballot in November.I would not be surprised to find that the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is just as cynical a group on the other side, but behavior by one does not excuse behavior by another. Whether what these groups did is legal or not doesn't matter to me. I don't believe that the law should be the source of morality and ethics. "No controlling legal authority" doesn't fly with me. Right, wrong and the law often intersect, but aren't all the same.
Spokesmen for both groups denied wrongdoing.
Posted by fad at 7:45am
Part of being a fucking moron means that I generally am not aware of certain things, primarily movies, literature or music. It's usually best not to ask me if I've seen, heard, or read something; just assume I haven't. And if I have, it's safe to assume I didn't understand it anyway, which is effectively the same thing. Since I'm so dim, I usually don't try to watch, read or listen to most things. Why bother frustrating myself when I'm not going to get it anyway? It's the same lesson I have to learn every couple years with women. If I'm interested in her, don't even bother. More often than not she's waiting around for some good looking guy to treat her like shit and make her think it's her fault.
What this all means is that, I'm clueless to pretty much all non-TV pop-culture. Even if a movie doesn't require great insight to enjoy, if it's legendary, I tend to avoid it for fear I won't get it or will be left out of the joke even upon seeing it. One case was the movie Caddyshack. Until two years ago, I had never seen more than a couple clips. Part of this was because I figured it was one of those movies not worth watching on basic cable, so it had to wait until I rented it.
Finally one night I rented it along with some other movie. I had me a little alky-hol, and set it as the second in cue figuring it would need fewer of my half-wits to enjoy. Sometime during the movie, and after lot more little alky-hol, I went to the pad on my fridge and wrote:
I didn't discover this message until after I returned the movies, so was left with my curiousity as to what this message meant. After only a month, or so, I had to find out. I rented the movie again, fast-forwarded to 21:30 (and some other important scenes, of course) to find out what was so nuts about that moment. The answer? Nothing. There is absolutely nothing special going on twenty-one minutes and thirty seconds into that movie.Caddyshack
21:30
INSANE!
I sure wish I knew what that message meant. I'm so stupid, I can't even figure out what my own writing means.
Posted by fad at 7:25am
June 29th, 2004
Posted by fad at 8:20pm
"Overage". Another word that needs to die.
Posted by fad at 7:44pm
And now, crashing into the dinner hour, I present this story.
He told police he'd been ill and soiled his underwear. He changed at a friend's house, then climbed over two barbed-wire-topped fences to ditch the skivvies.He climbed over two barged-wire-topped fences just to get rid of soiled underwear? Yeah, I'm sure that's all he was trying to get rid of.
Musil pleaded guilty last week to defiant trespass.If trespassing with intent to ditch a shitload isn't defiant, then I don't know what is.
Posted by fad at 6:12pm
I'm really unhappy with this font for readability. Anyone have any suggestions for a better one?
Posted by fad at 4:26pm
The last paragraph of this story just kills me. First the set up.
The nine were part of what prosecutors called "a highly organized team of professional protesters" from across the country and Canada.And here's the punchline.
Five broke into a construction site along First Avenue early Feb. 19 to unfurl a massive banner with an anti-logging message while the other four coordinated the effort from the ground.
The protest disrupted business for the construction company, which had nothing to do with the protesters' message and was apparently targeted simply because it had a crane.I've always wondered how these people would feel if I just started appropriating stuff near them (not property, thank you, as that is theft) for my unrelated message. It's like my dream of rushing a Greenpeace office and hanging up a banner to exclaim that, despite the blind refs, Jerry Rice did fumble in that 1999 playoff game against the Packers. Or something else unrelated.
Posted by fad at 4:21pm
That plastic tramp, Barbie, has found her new man, and he's just as butch as the old one.
Toymaker Mattel reports that a majority of fans who logged onto Barbie's web site over the past few weeks picked the Australia-born surfer Blaine doll over a pool of competitors.Just imagine the bitch-slapping after Ken hears the news and liquid courages up with a few cosmos.
He replaces the Ken doll, which appeared in 1961, two years after Barbie, but is being phased out.They're going to kill Kenny!
Posted by fad at 3:42pm
I'd like to say that it is very annoying that view.atdmt.com cannot be contacted as it appears every frickin' newspaper site uses it to serve ads.
Posted by fad at 2:46pm
I hope to see a nice jar of these right next to my painkillers or deodorants.
The Food and Drug Administration approved an application from French firm Ricarimpex to market leeches for medicinal purposes. The company has been breeding leeches for 150 years, the FDA said.French leeches? Why can't we have good, old American leeches!
Posted by fad at 2:33pm
Ok, some random stuff. It's all corn in the crap, but oh well.
- I hate the sound of the word "gal". I also hate the sound of "neither" or "either" pronounced "neye-ther" or "eye-ther".
- I become more convinced that no matter the results of this next election, George Bush will be assassinated after he leaves office due to the incredibly personalized hatred. Those who will cheer it, openly or secretly, will immediately spin it as part of the zionist/neocon conspiracy to continue war fever and racism amongst the idiot AmeriKKKan public.
- Teachers didn't look like this when I was growing up. They weren't fucking 14 year olds either.
- Truly our vices drive progress like little else.
Posted by fad at 1:01pm
Whoops! I forgot I changed this thing to show only the last four days worth(less) of posts. I had good reason for doing this too....Ok, not really. For some unknown reason, it has always bothered me that the index page is so damn long (from the many posts posted), so decided to shrink that up. Though this solution of not posting at all seems to work pretty well too.
Guess this means this is the first post here in four days. Hope it's worthy.
(UPDATE: For the time being, until things get going here again, I reset the front page to a full week of glory.)
Posted by fad at 10:51am