Intellectual Poison

Liberated Christians

Conspired Miscarriage Tests New Law in which a pregnant 16 year old had her boyfriend stand on her stomach to induce a miscarriage.

The boyfriend is being tried for murder under a new Texas law to protect the unborn. Why the mother isn't being charged with murder is beyond me, she was obviously complicit in the action and allowed the children in her womb to be killed.

These people aren't people, they're fucking animals in people skin. They shouldn't be allowed to continue to exist. Sorry, these people are disgusting. At the very least, they should never walk free again and should have their ability to reproduce permanently revoked.

Damn, just when my faith in humanity was on the rise.
via.

I'd wanted to write about this on Friday when it was fresh and the finger marks from the slappage were new and still had the angry redness.

But here it is Monday morning and now its time to shed some light on yet another dismissal from the shop.

A little back story. She was brought in because she had previous work experience with our sales vp, she had a track record, she had the skills, the wits, the whatever to get the job done. She was hired about 6 weeks ago or so, maybe a little less. During that time, her main job metric was call volume (and, of course, subsequent sales resulting from those calls) and her mandate (which is my new favorite word) was to be making 25 calls a day to drum up leads and sales. These weren't cold, cold calls, these were calls to companies that had expressed an interest in our company already and were looking for more information.

Not hard, right?

The other sales guy, who's taken far more shit in his position than I would be able to swallow, averages just under 30 calls a day, above and beyond the call. This new saleswoman was averaging a most unimpressive less than 1 call per day. Let's say that again. Her target was 25 calls a day, she was making less than 1 call per day. In the last month she was with the company, she made a total of 17 outgoing phonecalls, three were to her car dealership.

But wait, it gets better. Not only was she not working, she was emailing her friends from her work account and slagging her direct boss and the owner of the company. Who'd both already realized that something was wrong and had had all of her work emails forwarded on to both of them. Kind of stupid to be badmouthing your boss and boss's boss in email that can easily and legally be read.

The final thing that made me laugh is that she was slagging me on Friday morning via instant message to the other sales guy complaining that I never did any work. I wonder just how fucked up her thinking is that she was able to saw I don't work enough or hard enough and she was doing pretty well literally, nothing every day. Heck, I've been at the company longer than anyone else, I don't do nothing but I don't rush around like an idiot trying to look busy when I'm not getting my job done.

So, yeah, see ya, chickie. I would have been alot more bothered by her dismissal if she hadn't been pretty self evidently wrong for the company. I knew the writing was on the wall when she basically refused to follow up on an email from a consultant. Oh well, I'm sure someone somewhere else will be taken in by her "interview" game and then will realize that she's just wasting space there as well.

Good luck in your next endeavour. And that's about as pleasant as I will ever be to her again. I can understand slagging your boss but I think its rather stupid to slag people who actually like you and wanted you to succeed.

Anyway, this will be an interesting week. No daycare as our provider's in Puerto Vallarta this week so we've got one of our neice's staying down this week to take care of the boy. She brought along her dog so Nande's got a playpal too. But its going to be interesting with Graydon sleeping in our bedroom so she can have a little privacy and space of her own.

And next weekend will see the start of the conference we've been working on for the last 6 or 7 months. I will be most pleased next Wednesday when its all behind us and I can get back to PR again.

In summation, a lesson for you disgruntled new hire types? Don't send slag emails from your work email, that's just ignorantly stupid and asking to be fired. Don't slag your co-workers who were pulling for you, it just makes you look like a bitch. And don't schedule your daycare provider's vacation during the week before your biggest work event of your life, unless you like making things more difficult than they have to be.

Happy Monday everyone. I think I'm going to go and grab some Cheddar and play catch up on the last two of those.

(warning, embedded QT video in link)

Empowering Children Through the Art of Photography

With an Oscar Nominated documentary, Born into Brothels ,under her belt, Zana Briski's spinoff project, Kids with Cameras, teaches children growing up in difficult circumstances the art and skills of photography to empower them to appreciate the beauty and dignity of their own expression.

With projects in Calcutta, Haiti, Jerusalem and Cairo, they send great photographers to lead workshops, the children are given inexpensive 35mm cameras to capture whatever they choose and then the children's pictures are shown (and sold) around the world through exhibits, books and film.

Also posted to MeFi.

You just know that there a few mad scientists out there checking the couch cushions to see if they can come up with the $350,000 to buy the Cray Supercomputer T3E-1200E.

Funny thing is, I bet a couple of dozen networked G5's would give it a serious run for the money.

But man, this would look incredibly cool in my home office. And I bet it can run Unreal Tournament really, really fast!

I don't know about you folks out there but this was a hard week for me. Hard to not blog, hard to not post the pictures of the Knills from the recovered camera flash card (and subsequent Flickr Missing Persons Group), hard to not post the story from Tuckle about a sexually molested SEVEN MONTH OLD, the awful story of a 5 year old from Glory Road who got shot in the mouth. And there's been more on top of all of it. Work's been wacky, some good, some bad, some incredibly stupid, remind me to relate the story of the newest hasta la vista. There's always awesome Graydon news as well.

So its time to breathe a few times. Remember that things go on, heroes eventually die and with their dying, they become immortal. We will always have his books that he did write, there may be lost manuscripts, hell, lost cocktail napkins. Time to quit mourning and get on with it all again.

So I've got alot on my mind these days. Lots going on at home, lots going on at work. But instead, take a gander through California Motorcycle Roads.

I'm in Santa Cruz County, which one should I go on tomorrow?

On another note
I have taken the opportunity to revive and make good use of the Album again. Its now a Flickr hot spot, where I'm going to post my best pics and the best pics I come across. I have started to become sort of addicted to Flickr. There are some issues with the template over there on the album (I'm not sure how I got it set to slow inverted pyramid) but its a start and I'll soon have a feed here.

Anyway, I've also taken the opportunity to start writing stories again. I've got one that's in mid-go and I think I'm going to go have a hot tub and see if I can beat up my keyboard and the English language for a bit.

Intellectual Poison is mourning the loss of one of its greatest influences, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. This week's posts will all be under this one and will relate to this extraordinary man's extraordinary life.

"I would feel real trapped in this life if I didn't know I could commit suicide at any time." - HST


Hunter S. Thompson, R.I.P February 20, 2005

I don't know what to say. I'm so deeply, deeply saddened by this news.

Words aren't going to be able to express how sad this news has made me. I feel like a part of my youth, like a part of me has been ripped away from me. His influence on me and many, many others, the gift of just fucking writing. He gave it to me and it stays with me today.

I've decided that Intellectual Poison will observe a one week period of mourning for one of the greatest men of my generation.


There is a timeline of his life (through to 2002) at Life of Gonzo and if you're not sure who he is, go read his Wiki. For a taste of what he was like, try his WikiQuote.

If you have any Hunter S. Thompson stories you'd like to share, please go ahead. I've got a couple but I'm going to just feel bad for myself tonight.


Note, yes, that is a spear he's holding in that picture.

Some choice quotes: There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.

On Journalists and Journalism: Why bother with newspapers, if this is all they offer? Agnew was right. The press is a gang of cruel faggots. Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits - a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.

In a nation run by swine, all pigs are upward-mobile and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: Not necessarily to Win, but mainly to keep from Losing Completely.

[Update: Tuesday the 22nd, ESPN's Page 2's Tribute to HST. Nice.

Another update: The Denver Post has an update on his death along with some info about medical issues that may have contributed to his suicide.]

[Update: Wednesday the 23rd. Saw this in an article about Hunter having planned his suicide, "The family is looking into whether Thompson's cremated remains can be blasted out of a cannon, a wish the gun-loving writer often expressed, Brinkley said." And that, in a tidy little nutshell, helps to explain how this man thought. And it also aptly demonstrates that this was a man who refused to live life on someone else's terms.

Here's Ralph Steadman's Eulogy to Hunter. Which begins with, "Hunter said these words to me many years ago: "I would feel real trapped in this life if I didn't know I could commit suicide at any time.""]

[Update: Friday the 25th.
Strangely, this image of Hunter as stylized by the excellent Ralph Steadman epitomizes and represents Hunter better than any pic of him and is only superceded by the double-thumbed freak power fist above on the campaign poster.


Fare thee well, good Doctor. I, along with many others, will continue to miss you for a very long time.]

Like many others, I'm intriqued by the Gates art project going on in New York's Central Park right now. I can't fly across the country to check it out for myself but that's what digital cameras and sites like Flickr are for

Flickr: The Central Park Pool, is very much about the Gates right now and I think I would enjoy the showing in person quite a bit even if I think its kind of a strange art project.

I am glad that it was completely funded by the artist himself though. Spending $20 million of public money on this would have been an outrage given school closures and other budgetary issues.

When would be the best time to experience the show? Dawn? Sunset? Midnight on a full moon?

Here ya go, Jeff G.

Here's what Brit Hume said

In a written statement to Congress in 1935, Roosevelt said that any Social Security plans should include, "Voluntary contributory annuities, by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age," adding that government funding, "ought to ultimately be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans.

Here's what FDR said

"In the important field of security for our old people, it seems necessary to adopt three principles:
First, non-contributory old-age pensions for those who are now too old to build up their own insurance. It is, of course, clear that for perhaps thirty years to come funds will have to be provided by the States and the Federal Government to meet these pensions.
Second, compulsory contributory annuities which in time will establish a self-supporting system for those now young and for future generations.
Third, voluntary contributory annuities by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age.
It is proposed that the Federal Government assume one-half of the cost of the old-age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans."

The issue at hand is what FDR said and intended and what Brit Hume said, correct?

What FDR said is that, to get the system started, there will be about thirty years of "free riders" who are already too old to pay as much into the system as they would take out. That's the non-contributory old-age pensions part. Got it?

When Brit Hume omits It is proposed that the Federal Government assume one-half of the cost of the old-age pension plan, which from the quote he commits a logical fallacy and leaves the listener with the impression that FDR intended on the privatization of Social Security. Hume uses a subtle trick to connect the voluntary annuity plans with social security and then with FDR's ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans when he didn't intend on Social Security being phased out, he intended that the first point, the one about some people being already too old to pay into the system having to be free riders until the system itself could spool up and become self-supporting, i.e. enough people are paying into it to support those who are getting benefits from it.

FDR intended that the federal government would pick up half the tab for the free riders until the system came up to speed.

Hume distorts FDR's meaning intentionally to serve his purpose. Willful distortions of the truth are lies. Brit Hume is lying about what FDR meant when it came to the privatization of Social Security.

Have I made my point yet? Or, better yet. Do you concede that Brit Hume willfully and intentionally misrepresented the words and intentions of Roosevelt? Because that's exactly what he did, regardless of whether you believe it or not.

Finally, a worthwhile response to those stupid phrases "Cowboy Up" and "Pony Up" which I don't have the first clue what they means and don't care. I can drink up, I can spit up, I can make up but I won't be Cowboy Up-ping anytime soon.

But now I've got "Geek Up!" (). And I have just definitely Geeked Up big time. I've just gotten the case for my new Clie NZ90 (review is forthcoming still) that allows me to clip it to my belt instead of having to carry it in my hand or find a big ol' pocket to slip it into.

I've long held a fantasy of a geek utility belt kind of along the lines of Batman's but without the plastic explosive grenades. More just a way to easily and safely put on your gear.

With a little more eBaying, I could strap on my iPod, my Clie, my cellphone and maybe even the digital camera, infrared thermometer, monocular and Swiss Army Knife (sadly it is not the one with the USB drive) on to my belt. And then, I would truly be closer to Geek Nirvana.

Yeah, Geek Up! and this geek is out.

Maybe not.
Time to start paying the piper for his piping, eh?
State nails smokers who didn't pay taxes

Yeah, we're in the throes of teething now, deeply in the throes of teething and what that means, for the non-parents out there, is that Graydon will sleep for a couple of hours and then wake up in full scream mode. Or he'll just moan alot, loudly.

Combine teething with yet another runny nose and congested chest and we have a recipe for sleepless nights, short tempers and a sort of glazed over look in the eyes.

He's gotten a couple of teeth to break through the gumline and happily mashes things up with his tiny teeth but there are many more on the way and until they break through, they stretch the gum, irritate nerve endings and basically just make for a fairly miserable situation.

And, because he's such a kind and thoughtful baby, he thought he'd share his discomfort and, the double dip, explore the range of his ability to make noise with his mouth. Imagine loud moaning, now imagine it starting at 5:30 or so in the morning after being up until nearly 1 trying to get him fed, changed, not in agony with his teeth and not drowning in his mucus (I think his bed was flat for like three days before I re-elevated the head to help the snot drain).

What it means is that we will need to steal naps over the weekend when he naps. Because as it is, we just going deeper and deeper into sleep deprivation and sleep shorting and, over the longterm, that's just not a winning strategy no matter what my brother and his four hours a night say.

Via Oliver Willis.
Brit Hume willfully and intentionally warped FDR's words to make it appear as if FDR supported privatization of social security. This is a brazen falsehood. President Roosevelt's grandson, James Roosevelt Jr., describes Hume's journalistic malfeasance as an "an outrageous distortion".

And anyway, the guy's been dead for like seven years and someone just forgot to tell him to go lie in the ground. Maybe he should become a hacker so his handle could be exHUMEd?

This is a worse scandal than RatherGate (or MemoGate) really because this is intentional misrepresentation of a previous president's beliefs to try and propel the current president's fake crisis agenda.

How Hume calls himself a journalist is beyond me, he's a GOP lapdog, probably a Shih Tzu.

Kevin Drum does a nice job of dissecting the crime at the Washington Monthly good to play catchup if you're joining the fun a little late.

[Update: Thanks to oh-so-ever-right wanks at some site called Protein Wisdom (which sounds like someone trying to get smart by giving blowjobs to me but I'm sure there's something more profound behind it [Update: ol Jeff G. didn't get what I meant so let's try again. His blog's name reminds me of a protein shake, a slang for a blowjob. Of course, he took it personally and calls me a cockbobber, which is kind of funny. Have fun in your echo chamber.]) for deigning to select my comment about exHUMEdGate being a worse transgression than RatherGate. It is worse. Brit Hume willfully and knowingly took the published words of a president and reorganized them to suit his needs.

Its intellectually dishonest, its ethical dishonest and he, as the anchorman of a major news channel, should have known better and should step down as this proves pretty conclusively that he's unfit to report the news since he wants so much to be making it himself.

Moronic comments? Its easier to cast aspersions on the messenger rather than the message.

And by the way, mathamagicians, Gannon/Guckert and Hume aren't the only shiny fuckups from your side. Try Armstrong Williams, Michael McManus and Maggie Gallagher as well as Condileeza Rice lying under oath and Dick Cheney telling a member of the Senate to "Go Fuck Himself" on the floor of the Senate. And then there's that whole thing with the WMD's, No Child Left Behind, the Clean Skies Act, the Clean Water Act, the Patriot Act and the whole host of other legislation named the exact opposite of what it really does. Truth in government would really call these: A Lot of Children Left Behind, the Filthy Skies Act, the Dirty Water Act and the Invasion of American's Right to Privacy in the name of Terrorist Threats Act.

I will renew it here, my call for Public Pledges of Ethical and Moral Journalism. Or, as I noted in the comments, at least some means of easily evaluating the relative skew of the news program being watched. Same thing for blogs, I hate reading a site for ten minutes before realizing that they're yet another GOP Parrot.

Here, go and read what other bloggers are saying: Technorati: Brit Hume Must Resign.]

One other bit of news from last night's excitement and then a bit of unrelated news to pass along.

We found out the real reason the wife from next door isn't around any more and its not because she left him. Its because she got caught in flagrante, in her house, with another man. And sorry, but that's just cold and lame and demonstrative of her character.

It also helps explain alot more about the dynamic over there. And now I can't wait to see her dropping off one of the kids because I won't be politely averting my gaze. Nope, now I'll be looking right at her and seeing her for what she is, an adulterer.

The other news is potentially very, very good news. In the midst of last night's tension part of the program I did some house hunting and land searching. And I came across a parcel that might be exactly what we've been looking for. Its not all that far away but is in a great little town, we'll have some space and the price is right. I'm going to go and check it out on Saturday.

So there's a chance we'll be buying some land soon and then we can begin the process of creating a home over there so we can rent this place out while the property values continue to climb by double digits year in and year out.

Keep your fingers crossed that the land is suitable for us and that no one else has already jumped on it.

Note, apologies for any omissions or missed words or discontinued thoughts. This was sort of written in one big burst, well two big bursts. And now my eyes are hurting so I'm going to bed.

Beginning at 7 pm
Well, of course, things didn't stay quiet for very long. The neighbor's asshole pal was there today. I got home a minute after P, she was just getting Graydon out of the car and talking with the young lady who lives next to us with her dad.

We all come in the house and, by the time I got upstairs, someone had pulled in to the driveway, parked so as to obstruct the common area and make it harder for us to leave, again.

I went to the door and the guy who is staying at the house, doesn't own it, doesn't actually reside there, the same one who I had move his car the other day in the morning because he was unable to park it out of the way. He answers the door, he's obviously been drinking, he's obviously been stewing in his piss about my telling him to move his car the other day.

So he gets right up in my face and tells me to fuck off and get off his property. No reasoning, no nothing and he was very, very close to taking a swing at me. I'm not dumb enough to get into a fight with him as I'm well aware that there are five or six other people in the house and fighting is for idiots anyway.

I tell him all we want is to not have the cars parked in the way, its not too much to ask and is, in fact, our right to have proper access in and out of our house.

But he's not listening and is just itching for some reason to try and punch me. Apparently I was less than wholly polite the other morning when I made him move his car and that's been bugging him.

He threatened me physically a couple of times as I realized that he was incapable of rational thoughts and was not going to get anywhere. As I walked back across the garage, his kid or someone's kid came out and looked like he was ready to jump me as well.

A few minutes later, P and Graydon are heading out to go to swim practice (his first lesson which should have been cause for celebration but I didn't go because I don't feel safe leaving my house alone now which royally sucks ass). I walked them out because I knew the drunk fucknuts was going to take another opportunity to demonstrate his assholery.

And he did. Getting right up to shouting almost immediately. No listening to either of us, no listening to his wife, no listening at all. Just angry drunk...

Okay, hmm, so things have changed a bit since I started writing this. After much ugliness and unhappiness and calls made to try and figure out what to do and where to go because this house had become unlivable. There was no way that we would be able to live near such, well, meanness.

The good neighbor came down to help diffuse the earlier volatile situation and, later, after the bad neighbor got home, had a chance to talk to his folks and hear what had been going on. P came home with Graydon and I went back out to make sure the angry, angry guy wasn't around and looking to start something with her and my boy.

As we were getting the boy out of his car seat, P saw the neighbor is the garage and called out to him to ask him if we could talk, I think fully expecting him to say something nasty and walk away.

But he didn't. He came out, had the other guy close the garage door, and talked to us. We actually spoke for a long time, the angry guy came out, I found out it's his brother, and he was sent away. And we talked more.

At one point while we talked, all very calmly and all adult-like by the way. One of the two phones in my pockets began to ring and I knew it was the local police station returning my call as I'd asked for an officer to call me so I could ask his advice about the situation.

I stepped around the corner of the house and talked with him for a minute or two. It was a strange conversation too. It went like this.
"Hello, Mr. Huh? This is Officer Bob."
"Hi, thanks for calling me back, I appreciate it."
"You're welcome, sir, now, I understand you're having issues with your neighbor?"
"Well, here's the thing. We were having issues with our neighbor and, since I called in earlier, we've actually gotten together and are talking things out. And things are going really pretty well."
I thought I could hear his jaw drop and he replied, "Really? This might be a first for me," and I could tell he was astonished. And in a good way which was cool.
"Yeah, it caught us by surprise too."
"Okay, well, if you're sure you don't need us then good luck and good work on talking it out with him. Let us know if you do need us," and he hung up after I said thanks and good night. I was pretty sure he was going off to tell the first person he saw what had happened.

I went back to talk with him some more, we wiped the slate clean, we started fresh. He gave me his card, I will give him mine (no wallet then) and we have an open communication between our houses again.

A very equitable and welcome resolution to the earlier tension and discomfort. Of course, words are merely words and actions are the real proof in the pudding, so to speak.

I went up and talked with the good neighbor for a while afterwards, letting him know what had happened and how well it had gone. He was suitably pleased as well and there's really a great load of tension that's gone from all the houses. Well, except for the other neighbor's down the hill, they haven't reaped the new world order.

But then, she's kind of overwound anyway. She was amazed when P would take Nande for walks in the slough while she was pregnant, during the day! She fully expected roving bands of murderer/rapists to drag her into the underbrush. And my first interaction was her screaming at me to stop lighting firecrackers when I wasn't lighting firecrackers.

Oh well, I'm going to get some sleep, hope tomorrow holds the promise that tonight fostered.

Culpepper takes back necklace from paralyzed player and what a fine show of the kind of prick he is.

Publicly he gave it to him, privately he asked for it back. Daunte Culpepper just joined the list of asshole athletes who I will be cheering for to have a career ending injury every time they play (yeah, you're on the list to Terrell and you too Randy).

What a piece of shit.
Thanks to the dirty mushroom for the heads up.

'Sausage King' Sentenced To Death For Inspector Slayings

It was a few years ago now but the skinny is four investigators went out to the Santos Linguisa factory in San Leandro to inspect the site for possible health code violations. Stuart Alexander, the owner of the factory, killed three of them. And this was after he himself had switched on the surveillance tape that recorded the whole thing.

From what I know and what I remember, this was a cold, calculated crime. The article says he planned to plead insanity, write a book or movie and make mad profit from the whole sad affair.

Hard to make a buck when you're dead though, eh Stuart?

Okay, let's try this again now that Blogger's removed its head from its ass (after trashing a perfectly good post this morning, fuckers).

I had a lovely commute this morning, for the most part, with the exception of one cockface. I'm at a stoplight with cars behind me, the light changes and I see this big truck several hundred feet back, in the lane next to me, accelerate as if to rip past everyone and cut in front of me where the two lanes go to one.

So I made it so he couldn't exercise his willfull dickery (like that? its shiny and new) and, because he damned near hit my car anyway, I flipped him off twice, once for the first asshole move of self absorption, the second for nearly hitting me in his haste to cut me off.

And so, I would like to suggest some new bumper stickers to help contain and ease roadrage.

Quit Driving Like an Asshole

I'm sorry, did you just buy the highway because you drive like you own the fucking road.

How do you see out your ass?

Golden Rule of Commuting: Treat Others Like You Want to Be Treated, it isn't that hard.

DON'T Be Such a DICK!

Drive Nice! Play Nice! Be Nice!

I get it, you spent more on your car so that entitles you to behave like a douchebag?

I like the first one the best and there's the oldie but goodie "Are you stupid or just evil?" that needs to be a bumper sticker badly. Maybe I'll get a run of prints going and give them away.

My other driving pet peeve lately? Assholes who drive with their high beams on ALL. THE. TIME. They should be forced to live with those damned lights in their eyes. That and the HID (high intensity discharge) lights should be illegal to use if they are adjusted improperly and point up into oncoming traffic. They are too damned bright for that.

And please, haven't we all had enough of those unspeakably stupid thumper stereos that exist for no other reason save to force you to listen to their stupid thump, thump, thump.

So apparently the budget fix for San Francisco is to make everyone pay like hell to get near the city. Last week they were talking about charging cyclists and walkers to to cross the Golden Gate. This week they're talking about a downtown area that would require a cover charge to enter to help control traffic congestion (and make a lame ass buck).

Think about that for a second. Part of San Francisco would be closed to you unless you pay money to enter it, not a bridge, not a causeway, an arbitrarily marked section of downtown that they want to make you pay to enter.

This is a terrible idea for many, many reasons not the least of which is that this will kill a huge amount of tourism coming to the city. San Francisco is a great city but there are plenty, plenty of other places to go and visit in this part of the nation. I know that I would be finding other places to go if they did this.

The idea that they can just continue to leech money from people just using the city is just plain bad. There are better ways to generate revenue.

If only the layoff hadn't forced its early sale, the last two years have been quite kind to Apple. I didn't have much but I had some and it would have, what, sextupled in value? That kind of blows.

This has been previously discussed as a great means of getting back at the asshole with legs that lives next door. But, as leblanc notes in her comment below, escalation of the situation is not a great idea.
BERLIN (Reuters) - Before leaving on vacation, a German couple set up a loudspeaker and timer with the sound of a crowing cock to blast their neighbors every morning.

After complaints, police in the northern town of Itzehoe obtained a warrant to enter the house and discovered the gear with the speakers aimed at the neighbors and rigged to a timer.

'The apparatus switched on between 2 and 4 o'clock in the morning and produced a cock crowing at an enormous volume. This would last for 20 minutes with breaks in between,' police said.

Police confiscated the gear and charged the vacationers, who are still away, with bodily harm and disturbing the peace. The neighbors had no history of antagonism."

Another great pic of the greatest little boy ever (now sporting TWO teeth). His photogenic qualities seem to be improving and his cuteness factor is literally off the scale altogether.

He also fell asleep in my arms not once but twice last night.

Another great photo of my little guy showing off his first tooth from the weekend! He is also extremely mobile these days too, scuttling across a room almost as fast as you can run after him. Soon, he'll be walking and we'll be running, alot!

According to the linked page up ahead, John Madden commutes 80,000 miles a year in his uber bus, the Madden Cruiser. Why? Because he doesn't dig on being in an enclosed space 7 miles up in the air. Which really makes pretty good sense if you think about it.

One, I saw a license plate surround that very nicely sums up alot of how I feel about the state and future of the world. "Losing my faith in humanity, one person at a time."

Its a depressing thought really. But getting some teenaged slickhaired pimple monkey who MUST be ahead of me to merge onto the highway and nearly hitting me in the process AND THEN flipping me off for not getting out of his way. My faith-o-meter is dipping ever closer to just zero.

But I have a new meter now, its called my Hope for Humanity meter, it jumps up wildly everytime I see my little boy, or when he falls asleep in my arms or just is. He is the most amazing little guy I've ever known and watching him grow is one of the best aspects of my life. The other edge of the sword is that I fear for him terribly. I worry about his safety with this asshole neighbor, I worry about him getting hurt, I worry about him while he sleeps and I worry about him when he crawls on the floor, more so when he's crawling towards an abandoned Nande toy. The world without erodes at my faith in humanity while my world within rebuilds it.

The other thought that occurred to me several times on the fifty minute 16 mile commute. Do people not know that windshield wipers have more than one speed? Do people just set them and forget them? Are other people in the car with someone who turns the windshield wipers on to warp speed at the first sign of rain embarassed to be in the car with them? It drives me nuts and I'm two cars away. Its barely sprinkling, just a notch above a mist even. And this stupid minivan's wipers were trying to get enough speed for lift off.

It would drive me nuts in about ten seconds. It also makes me wonder if these people freak out badly when it really does rain hard and they can't get their wipers to go any faster.

This is a gross story of the lack of humanity being evinced by a growing proportion of the population. And I hope that Sarah Brady's fighting back and actually killing her attacker sends a message to these incredibly warped people thinking they have some rational reason for murdering a pregnant woman and cutting her baby out of her body to pretend is her own.

Woman Who Killed Attacker Was 'Driven by Maternal Instincts'.

It goes without saying that anyone intent on murdering a pregnant woman for her unborn baby is operating on less than exemplary brain processes. And I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with them being killed for what they are trying to do. Its tragic that they are so warped in their thinking that they actually try to carry out their misdeed. But my feeling is that, once you start down that dark and evil path, you are beyond redemption and therefore have no further need to exist.

You kill another, or attempt to kill another, to steal what isn't yours to fulfill a void in you that the person you are trying to kill had no hand in creating. You're using another person and persons as a means to your own end and that leaps over the basic fact that each person is an end in and of themselves and cannot and should not be used as a means to further your own twisted agenda.

Of course, I know that's lost on someone who's made the rationalization to murder and steal an unborn baby. Good for you, Sarah. And to the next "damaged goods" idiot who wants to plan a murder/baby theft, I hope you die as well.

What a great way to start Valentine's Day, with my having to go and get the asshole neighbor to move yet another of his asshole friend's car from my driveway. This has happened four times now this weekend.

And its almost certainly going to get worse.

The quick backstory, asshole neighbor, let's call him Ratface because his face looks like a rat with a mustache, parked his then-wife's car in our driveway. My wife backed up (and since the driveway is humped some, couldn't see the car behind her. She hit it, caused about $800 of damage and we paid it. A couple of weeks later, his wife leaves him for another man and he's refused to willingly speak to us because, I think, he blames us for his wife leaving him and not the basic fact that he's a complete asshole.

Anyway, we don't have any desire to continue to pay to repair his or his friend's piece of shit cars they park all over the place. So we don't allow them to park their vehicles in our space or in the common area that allows him access to his parking area.

Now, we believe that they are telling their friends to do it on purpose because they know it pisses us off. So we've had to escalate it right back at them. Park here and your car will be towed. End of story.

And yes, this is after Ratface kept his neighbors up until past 2 in the morning on Saturday because he and his loser pals have to, HAVE TO, drink in the garage with the door open and smash their bottles in the recycling when they're done. They have to do this because they're completely self-absorbed fucknobs. We've had it with them and are very seriously involving the law in this matter because, honestly, I think its one of the only things they might respect. A threat to their wallet or their freedom (yes, jailtime for bad parking is excessive but I'm willing to grant a special sentence in this instance).

What I'm wondering is what are my legal rights here? I want to get the space marked off so its clear and I want to make Ratface understand that he brought all of this on himself with his pathetic return-to-high-school mentality.

Does anyone have experience with this? Any insight you can offer?

If it helps, his neighbor on the other side and our neighbor behind have all had it with him and his bullshit as well. No one in the neighborhood likes him, he knows it and he probably doesn't even like himself (I joked with Paula that he probably cries while masturbating).

Ohyeah, P reminds me that we have an association here, we do have CCNR's (rules for existence more or less) and he's violating them. Our association isn't active but the rules still exist. He's wrong and has no leg to stand on. Its just a shame that he's such a collosal asshole.

And yeah, it is making us very seriously consider moving from here sooner than we'd thought or hoped but we're not gonna sell. We're going to keep this house and use it as a rental property and build our real estate empire from here. Fuck Ratface and his loser pals.

Because my aim is the continual appeasement of my fans, I offer an extension of the Bill Murray post from a few days ago. I searched and found the Bill Murray Soundboard.

I was sorry to discover that they did not include the "Arrrrrrrrrmy training, Sir" quote but like the Stones say, you can't always get what you want. But I'm trying get what I need.

This week's Cheddar X is all about your best ways to spend a given sum of money. Round it off, round it down, do whatever makes you smile.

What's the best way to spend?

Fifty cents
Well, fifty cents will buy a whopping 16 minutes of parking outside San Francisco's SBC Park but that's not a good way to spend it. I'm going to go with a good old fashioned can of Coke.

A dollar
Scratcher or Lotto ticket, a buck can't do much but it can help you dream.

Five dollars
The best way to spend five bucks is to buy two quart bottle of Trader Joe's Fresh Squeezed Tangerine Juice. By the time you finish the first bottle, you want another one, it is truly that good.

Twenty dollars
One good lunch or a new CD or DVD. But the best way to spend it? Buying into a poker game with my pals and turning that twenty into forty. Does that count as spending it?

One hundred dollars
iPod Shuffle. I want one and you should too.

One thousand dollars
An Aerostich Roadcrafter riding suit. There's a reason they cost so much and its because they are the best (barring the handmade, custom sized jobbies that cost more than the bike itself).

One million dollars
This is a trickier one, the big money's gotta be dealt with more carefully or it turns back into little money quickly. Invest it, make sure that Graydon's future is more secure, buy land and have a big old fun party.

One hundred million dollars
Once you get to the 100 mill club, it becomes kind of pointless to think about the money you're spending. One hundred million dollars is far beyond my capacity to comprehend. But I would still have fun spending it!

And that's my cheese for this week.

So, what are all the cool kids doing with Flickr these days? Well, how about a dynamic graphical contact system, complete with pics, icons and bounci-ness?

Check out my Flickrgraph: Johnny Huh. But it might sack your system so be aware.

This will probably be the only post for the day since I'll be out and about most of the day. First stop is San Jose and then I'm up to San Francisco for another meeting. With some luck, I'll have a good portion of the afternoon free afterwards.

And then we're into weekend time! And we're off to the aquarium tomorrow which should be a great time with the little guy!

The battlelines of RFID have been drawn and the boundaries are going to be erased and redrawn a few times before this is all over. The first shots in the war have been fired at Brittan Elementary School where students have been outfitted with RFID school badges to automate attendance taking. Parents weren't consulted so there are some injured feelings and righteous issues with the privacy concerns.

I couldn't pretend to know how it will work out but the debate should be interesting. Does the need to know outweigh the right to privacy of the individual? How can we be sure that the technology won't be used to track movements and then used to persecute us?

Is it inevitable that people are implanted at birth without a choice? The problem with RFID is that it represents the boogeyman. It can be as tiny as a grain of sand but can still hold and transmit data either actively or passively, say when you walk by a traffic camera or take money out of the bank. The overt omnipresence of "The Man" is a very unpleasant thought indeed.