Intellectual Poison

Go on over and read Ryan's Jerkin' McGurkin entry or, rather, take in the graphic silliness of the newspaper clipping.

This is why I keep going back. Not only is the tagline ridiculous, the Pastor's name is Bates, Pastor Bates? Which has given rise to a brand new word(s), Pastorbate and Pasturbation.

Thanks for adding a stupid grin to my Wednesday morning, Rhodes!
Tags: proofreading, mistake humor, funny

Is there an inverse relationship between how much you spent on your car and how high your IQ is? I swear I see more utter dumbfucks behind the wheels of $50k and up cars than any other. Not to say that there aren't morons driving around in crappy old Chevy Caprice's with beanie babies piled in the back window. No, they still exist but I'm amazed at what goddamned morons there are in the higher end rides.

Of course, I have a pertinent example of this from my morning commute or I wouldn't be writing about it.

There's a stoplight just before the parking garage where I park to go into work. Its a left turn and there's a pressure pad that your vehicle's gotta be on to make the turn signal go. This isn't rocket science, it really isn't. And yet, this morning's moron had pulled his expensive and roll over prone Range Rover too far forward to depress the pressure plate. And not far enough forward so that the car behind him could trigger it. So we got to sit and watch the lights change and didn't ever get our green arrow. I sat through two full light exchanges before pulling back into the through traffic and going into the garage the longer way. Last I saw, they were still sitting there and my guess is the idiot in the Range Rover was getting pissed off at the "broken" light when it all his fault.

Do people not know about those switches? Do people really have no clue what makes the lights change? I guess a good portion of the people do not. Dumbasses.

[Update: I'd forgotten that I wanted to link to this MeFi thread about a Flickrite who commutes in Kuwait everyday and sees expensive cars stacked, racked and smacked all over the road. Kind of sobering to realize that there were serious injuries and death in just about every one of these pictures. Some are pretty shocking so click through at your own risk.]
Tags: commute, morons, idiot drivers, Flickr

Bonds begins taking light batting practice: Last week, the 41-year-old Bonds began sprinting and cutting at the UCLA track. Sprinting is good, cutting is good. Batting practice is good. A late run would be good, especially in the sad little loserland that is the NL West.

Finally, the Giants might have some kick before the end of the year. Which would be nice because they've pretty well been kittens all season, though Noah Lowry's been impressive and Schmidt's pitching well if not dominating.

The A's have been exciting to watch. Two games up in the West? Nice work. Nine from Zito with 9 K's and 1 earned? Excellent work.
Tags: baseball, San Francisco, Giants, Oakland, Athletics, Barry Bonds

Highlighting some of the pretty racist and ugly comments on some of the pictures coming out of the wake of Katrina over on a MeFi thread called Liberating the Loaves of Bread.

Check out the links to the pictures and read the short comments with each picture (mirrors 1, 2, 3 in case Yahoo yanks them). Black people are seen doing the same thing that white people are only the black people are labelled as looters while the white people are labelled as borrowers and finders.

Someone should be fired for this crap as its completely unwarranted and outrageously racist.
Tags: racism, hurricane, looting, finding, disaster

I've never really considered myself much of an artist. I can't draw very well, can't paint very well and am better at bashing things with a hammer than I am at sculpting. Though I am pretty good throwing pots on a wheel and working with clay. Though I do, on occasion, take a fairly decent photograph or two.

But this remains one of my most favorite "art" shots with embedded commentary. I guess part of the idea for the image came after reading a page from Maddox's Best Page in the Universe (some incredibly excellent rants and rips, well worth a detour off the polite Info-Superhighway) about Christopher Reeve is was an Asshole and I guess it struck a chord. Because his point of view is actually pretty spot-on even though its impolite to speak or write nasty things about the deceased.

Not only that, it felt good to be clever and do this too. Its good to feel clever every now and then. Its also good to shuck clothes and go running into the surf in the middle of the night too. And its good to feel your body work up a good sweat either riding your bicycle, lifting weights, doing aerobics or whatever.
Tags: photo commentary, Maddox

What's that sound like? Busy. Busy, busy, busy bees. From phone calls to emails to interviews to data pulls, today's shaping up to be another busy one in a series of busy ones.

It sure makes the day rip right by but sometimes I'd like to have a quiet day where I can surf for fun, cool and interesting stuff. I feel like I've been offline for the last week or so as I've been intentionally limiting my 'net time at home to spend more time helping out and playing with my little boy (who's hitting his terrible two's about ten months early).

But here's something to consider. Why is Snoop Dogg doing Chrysler commercials and why are they done so incredibly badly? The post production on the ads is atrocious, maybe its intentionally bad to be "edgy" or something. Doesn't make a damned bit of difference to me as the chances of my buying a Chrysler haven't changed ever, its been at zero and will remain at zero. Sorry, Lee Iaco-cizzle.
Tags: busy

After several weeks of off and on trying to track down this stupid little non-sending email problem with my work computer , I finally figured it out today. Finally after much hair pulling, after much under-the-breath cursing, after much fist shaking threatening actions and after much cross checking of working systems' settings.

Finally, after all of that, it was a fargin' default checked box blocking my access to port 25 so as to prevent me from sending any email out through, Calypso, my bulk mail program (part of my job requires me to email lists of editors with press releases and other information). One little checkbox defaulted, just one little thing and about fifteen Google searches, much reading and finally it came down to one suggestion to dig into the McAfee's firewall settings.

And, lo and behold, there it was. The blocked port and two seconds later, a click and a window closing and I'm back in business. What a complete fucking waste of time that was.

I hope you Windows-heads don't jump down my throat but I cannot fucking stand Windows XP or 2000 or any of the goddamned stupid ass Windows bullshit. It all blows. Sorry, anyone who likes it is a masochist. There's not a thing about XP that's intuitive, there's no means of figuring out what the hell's wrong with it without using the web as a resource. And its just stupidly put together. Things aren't where they should be, there could be redirects, there could be a thousand better ways to resolving stupid little issues like this one. But there aren't because Microsoft is too busy sucking its own dick and sending the bill to itself so it can write off the blowjob on its taxes.

Microsoft produces garbage software, they produce garbage operating systems and yet, the world's standardized on this garbage? Are people incredibly stupid or was there one of those three card monty switches right before people decided to take the other card? The only MS program I don't utterly despise is Excel because it allows me to make my pretty little charts and graphs so easily and so flexibly. I'm sure there's better more powerful programs out there to use but Excel works for me for now. Word, on the other hand, is like old Elvis, fat, bloated, stupid and overpriced. Today looks to be the only day in recent memory where Word won't crash on me as I shut down my machine (since I'd already shut it down during the witchunt).

The only good thing about having to use this shit operating system and software at work is that I'm so much happier when I get home and fire up my OS X. It makes Windows look like the pile of steaming yak butter that it really is.
Tags: microsoft, microsoft sucks balls, windows xp, calypso, garbage software, junkware, default setting, McAfee, anti-virus, anti-spam

Luckily some lessons can be learned by watching other people suffer. This evening I had occasion to watch someone driving a pick up truck with a new washer and a new dryer in the bed of the truck. For some reason, they had not bothered to tie the two large metal appliances in. And the gate was down on the pick up truck.

When the light turned green and the driver of the pickup truck accelerated and turned left, the bed of the pickup truck spewed one of the two appliances out the back. It was the washing machine. Hopelessly ruined by falling off the truck and landing on the concrete. It hit and sprayed parts everywhere, done.

So, a five dollar investment in some basic tie downs would have saved that, at minimum, three hundred buck washing machine. Bummer on that one. Not really a lesson I needed to learn but one that was certainly a good reminder to take precautions to think things through or risk spewing your project all over the road.

From my own end, this was a pretty busy weekend. The result is a redone downstairs bathroom. New (working) sink and vanity, new floor, new paint and brighter bulbs in the fixture. It looks good.

And I got to go to the local city dump. One hint, don't try to cut the line, people don't think its very funny, even if you do make an honest mistake and try it. Its a wash time wise almost, I waited in line for about 20 minutes when it would have taken me less than that to go to the other dump. But it was good to get more crap out of the garage. The space is almost workable, which will be nice.
Tags: doh!, house projects, bathroom, washing machine, smashed, ruined

Me likes the Flickr widgets that people keep coming up with. Here's the latest, magazine covers customized with whatever image you want, lots of text placements to choose from and you end up with a great looking cover instantly.

Its pretty darned cool and I'm pretty happy with my first completed work as it makes me smile. I've got a few more shots that would work well for the magazine cover treatment but they'll have to wait for another day. Though working on this has made me miss my little guy and I am pretty darned happy that its Friday and I get the whole weekend to play with him (and do house chores).
Tags: Baby Food Review, Flickr, magazine cover, Flickr widget

So this is the top of the stairs at the parking garage, the same overdone and stupid obstruction was at the bottom of the stairs. Stupid plastic straping and dinky chains. Dinky chains I guess because they figure everyone in the building that might see them is a woosy candyass. Not everyone is or was. I didn't care so I walked around to the open stairs (where one of the workers had left his hammer, pencil, tape measure and a screwdriver as he hurried off work this afternoon) but one of my co-workers said she wasn't going to go walking around so she tore through the tape, wiggled through the chains and then did the same thing at the top.

As happens, my work and my general contentedness with my working environment is on a roller coaster. Right now, its bottoming out again and that makes me get interested in pursuing other avenues of income.

With the heavy turnover we've had in the last year and alot of other factors that I can't discuss (because the ears have walls and I may have already said too much), its time again to look to spreading my wings and making a change.

And that's what I'm planning on doing this weekend. Getting things ordered so that I can start to really actively look to make a good change in what I do and who I do it for.
Tags: work, work issues

There are some developments to report on Graydon's development progress. The biggest and coolest was the other night when we were in the kitchen and he decided quite clearly that he was thirsty. So he walked to the counter, pointed at his sippy cup, stamped his foot (which was just adorable) and said "Ba-ba" and then pointed again. He then started nodding his head up and down like he was agreeing with himself that he wanted the Ba-Ba.

That was pretty cool and is the first time, to our knowledge, that he's asked for something specifically.

His other new tricks are designed to add gray hairs to his parent's head. He's taken to standing up without hands on his cart that his grandma got for him. And he's already tumbled off of it once or twice. Last night he was standing on it, very proudly, and decided he was going to do a little dance. Well, the dance threw off his balance and he fell down. He landed on his butt and rolled to his back and never hit his head at all on the ground but he was shaken up for a moment as he assessed what had happened and whether he was supposed to start crying or not.

His last new "trick" might not really qualify but he's been waking up at around midnight or so lately. And he starts crying pretty loudly. One of us goes and gets him, brings him into our bed and he's out again for a few hours. Though, this morning he head butted twice in the same place on my cheek, which kind of sucked especially since I was trying to sleep.

He's got all kinds of other funny little things that he does that endear me to him ever more. I love his charge hugs where he toddles from across the room, arms outstretched, to collide with me and wrap his little arms around me as I do the same for him. I love watching him light up when he is able to do something he's been trying to do, like putting his smiley ball in a cup or when he rolls a ball right back to me. He's a bundle of joy, that boy.
Tags: baby, baby steps, dangerboy, verbalization

The KneeSlider has a really cool post up right now about a bike called the Goldwing Retriever and it is too cool!

A motorcycle that converts into a tow truck when you need it? It can split lanes and tows up to 5500 pounds. Amazing stuff, the product of a Swedish company called (appropriately enough) Coming Through. There are videos of this machine in action to be had at the Discovery Channel as well as on Coming Through's own site.

I guess this means we need a new word, eh? Towbike.
Tags: motorcycle, towing, towbike, Coming Through

Nationals manager wants Palmeiro's records wiped out for failing a steroid test after swearing up and down and categorically that he has never, ever, ever done steroids, period, to a congressional committee looking into steroids in baseball (because, you know, everything else has already been taken care of).

But this very quickly becomes a slippery slope. Where do you draw the line? What about those games he won for the Orioles or Rangers? Do they get erased too? How far back do you go to "set the record straight"? Isn't it kind of crazy to change the rules after he's been found guilty and then level a whole new range of punishments against him?

Better to work forward instead of backward where the inherent nebulosity of history clouds any investigation.
[Update: I would also like to add that I believe Rafael Palmiero's bid for the Hall of Fame is gone. He has no chance of getting in now nor should he expect to with his tainted records and hypocrisy over steroids. But I cannot support the wiping of his records, there's just no way to know what's 'roid powered and what's not and I don't think its feasible to wipe his entire career as it appears Frank Robinson wants to do.]
Tags: baseball, steroids, Rafael Palmiero, Frank Robinson, scandal

"If we do not change our direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed."

-Chinese proverb
via.

I won't go into why this is poignant to me right now but rest assured that this is a pretty spot-on proverb. And I am looking to change course because I don't like where I'm heading right now.
Tags: proverb

What a crap way to start the commute this morning. I rode down to the bottom of my hill and was just about to pull out on to the road when my motorcycle stalled, kicked forward and then rolled over on its side, tossing me into the street and breaking off part of my front brake lever.

So yeah, that pretty much sucked ass. And then, when I picked the bike and tried to restart it, I learned that my clock is also an engine reporting unit as it told me the bike was flooded.

A few minutes later, I rode the bike back up the hill, parked it in the garage, checked it over for more damage, stripped out of my riding gear and drove in. Which was fine as there's a slight misting in the air that makes the roads dangerous without being really wet.

Damage is restricted to my right brake lever and cover. I've got a replacement brake lever from the SV but that cover's gonna have to be replaced. Joy!

But I'm fine, just pissed off about it, is all.
Tags: motorcycle, rollover

U.S. evangelist calls for assassination of Chavez, note, that's Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez he's recommending be assassinated, the head of a foreign country this hypocritical asshat Christian Coalition is advocating the murder of.

Let's see aside his blatantly hypocritical religious views (you, turn the other cheek, thou shalt not kill, those little things). Let's just focus on a spokesman for a large group of religious people advocating the assassination of a foreign leader. Has that sunk in yet? That Pat Robertson is around the bend, batshit insane and off his fucking rocker? Are you there yet? I'll wait.

Here, here's a quote from the linked article,

"We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability," Robertson said during Monday broadcast of his religious "The 700 Club" program.

"We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator," he continued. "It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with."

From later in the article, it appears Pat missed his window since "Political assassination as U.S. policy has been prohibited since 1976." Damn, time to get that time machine project underway again, isn't it, nutjob?

Yep, that's how we deal with people we don't like, Pat, we murder them! Yeah, Christianity. Yeah! By the way, Christianity rhymes quite well with Insanity, I wonder why that is?
[Update: Guess who's trying to retract his moronic statements? Hmm, not hard to figure out that he's attempting to spin his statements to mean something else. So now he's saying he didn't intend on calling for an assassination of a foreign leader, just a kidnapping, which is still illegal, still ridiculous for him to say and still grounds for his public derision, shunning and pointing-at-him-and-laughing. But its kind of hard to spin garbage like this:

"If he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it."

How is that discussing taking him out, this is very clearly talking about assassination.]
Tags: batshit insane, assassination, Pat Robertson, 700 Club

Its working gangbusters for the Democrats while you look like an unbelievable tool.

Ignore her until the end of the month, George, watch your approval rating continue to slide into Nixon territory. I heard on the news last night that a mere 36% of the country approves of your performance as president. That means two of every three people in this country disapproves of your performance as president. You'd be voted off the island if we voted right now and yet, you still strut and preen like a prize rooster who has a mandate. But you HAD a mandate, now you've got a growing populance that's tired of your smirks, chirps, lies and cowardice.

And ignore the mounting death toll, ignore the more synchronized attacks, get visibly angry that those durned Iraqi's won't just bully the Sunni's into signing a Constitution to hit your deadline for their ratification of their articles of law and rules for co-existence. Yeah, you look like the resolute leader. Oh yeah.

I think its pretty funny in a sideways sort of manner that Lance Armstrong gets hit with a doping allegation the day after he goes for a publicity pedal with the president, who's just a great bit ol' dumbass dope himself. I don't think Armstrong doped to win the Tour de France but I certainly appreciate the timing of the news.
Tags: approval rating, Bush, Cindy Sheehan, Iraq

Be prepared to pick your jaw up from the floor. Good friends, strangers and folks, I give you the Masturbating Monkey (actually, the toy costs $7.99 and satisfaction is NOT guaranteed).

But wait, there's more monkey love for you. How would like an honest to goodness faked phone call from a monkey? Oh yeah. Check our MonkeyPhoneCall and, for only $10, you can have someone pretend to be a monkey on the other end of the phone for you! Woot!
Tags: monkey, monkey fetish

CostCo, the best warehouse shopping company that doesn't exploit their workers or buy $15 billion in goods from China while professing to be pro-American (like Wal-Mart), is giving away 20 free digital camera prints to members.

Go here, enter your email and member number and they'll send you an email with the link to get your free prints. Easy, cheesy and please-y. Note, there is fine print and you will be signing up for mailings but they are easy to unsubscribe from so I'm not complaining.

Which reminds me, we need baby wipes.
Tags: CostCo, free, giveaway

This is how I get to spend my days, playing with this wonderful, beautiful and really funny little boy. His sleep was off this weekend due to an unscheduled late evening pick up but he soldiered on. This weekend's new techniques to age his parents a year in a moment? Balancing on top of, well, everything. From his rolly cart to the rocking chair to the big pack of diapers to his rocking giraffe, this kid is all about working on his balancing technique.

The most amazing one of the bunch was in the rocking chair. He'd climbed up into it on his own (also fairly new on his skills list) and stood up, not quite realizing that the chair didn't stay still. As he balanced some the chair rocked and, for an instant, his eyes got really, really big before he threw himself forward into the chair. I think, for an instant, he got just a little scared. But he was also just thrilled with himself for doing it too.

One of the other funny things from the weekend, aside from me finally taking a hand with pocket kings, was watching Graydon's reaction to the two neighbor kids riding their bikes around for him. He could not stop laughing. He was laughing so hard he had to double over! He would chase after them, stop, laugh, laugh harder and then chase after them some more. It was really incredibly sweet and funny.

The downside to the weekend was that iPhoto crapped out after loading up about 50 pictures from my camera. The photos are still on the computer but, for some reason, iPhoto can't recognize them as pictures. I was still able to send some up to Flickr, including the one above but its bothersome that some of my shots won't be easily available to me. I might just load them up, download them as fresh new jpgs and then import them, that'll teach iPhoto!
Tags: my son, baby, boy, laughing, cowboy

Because I've got a bunch of stuff to get done this afternoon I won't be able to put together a rant or review.

Instead, I'd recommend swinging on by The Hype Machine and gathering in vast armloads of mp3's from all over the blogosphere.
Tags: mp3, Hype Machine

In the latest PopSci, someone's come up with a better, albeit more technologically challenging, way of harnessing wind into usable energy.

Like the monster mother of all kites, a company called Sky Windpower (which sports an excellent website about high altitude wind power) has been founded by an Australian engineer with three others to attempt to harness the near limitless windpower of the jet stream with a machine they call an FEG (Flying Electric Generator).
They're currently seeking $4 million to build a 200 kilowatt prototype but still need to get FAA clearance to fly it. The production models would generate 20 megawatts each and would be flown in farms of up to 600 turbines to generate enough power to light up two cities the size of Chicago. Power and control of the huge machines would be handled by a three inch thick tether connected to a winch on a ground station.
Man, I love Popular Science!
Tags: energy solution, wind power, jet stream, wind, kite

Indeed.

So, last night was poker night with my crew of pals. A night where I had good luck but not enough good luck to win many hands. Case in point, I was dealt pocket kings not once, not twice but three times last night.

One time, I'd dealt and ended up with the pocket kings. And then I flopped three jacks, bam. Just like that I was sitting quite pretty with a full boat, jacks over kings and I was pretty sure I was gonna score a nice juicy pot. But no, you see, I'd also dealt a pair of pocket aces to a pal of mine to my immediate left. So she was sitting quite prettily with Aces full of Jacks.

I thought someone might be sitting on the fourth jack but it never did appear and I ended up losing to those damned pocket aces. But I had my redemption a little later on in the evening so I'm not complaining too much today.
[Update: Played again on Saturday, got pocket kings THREE more times, lost twice and, on the final time, those pocket kings secured me the win and a nice juicy pot that saw a corner being turned and the chips rolling back to me rather than away. Which was, to say, pretty sweet!]
Tags: poker, beer

I've just coined a new term for the three game sweep of the Oakland A's by the Baltimore Orioles, bittersweep. Because I like both teams an awful lot, its bittersweep that the O's took all three games.

I hate it when two of "my teams" play each other because one them has to lose. The A's could afford the losses a little more easily as the O's have a bigger hill to climb back into the race in the AL East (and what would be sweeter than bumping the Yankees out of the playoffs altogether?).

And yes, I did have to razz my A's megafan pal a bit.
Tags: baseball, Oakland, Athletics, Baltimore, Orioles, , sweep

Reward Grows for Duck Killer, there's a San Jose Mercury News hosted video (Real) and images of what some presumably teen or early 20 something asshole did to some ducks with his car and then with his bare hands. It isn't pretty, gentle or nice and now he's got a growing pricetag on his head. $10,000 as of last evening. It'll keep getting bigger and one of his pals who's as appalled as everyone else will drop a dime on his sorry ass.

The story is reminiscent of Andrew Burnett throwing a woman's bichon frise into traffic and killing it during a road rage incident a couple of years ago which sparked donations totalling more than $120,000 to find the dog's killer. But this duck killing is far more calculated and angry and wrong. This wasn't a spur of the moment event, this was a planned duck massacre and people are rightly furious.

He will be caught soon, given up by a pal lured by greed and disgust over his actions, just like the rest of the rational universe.

And then an angry mob will likely tear him limb from limb and feed him to the surviving ducks which is fine by me.
[Update: The reward is now up to $14,000. The heat is getting hotter and hotter on this mistake of a human being.]
Tags: animal cruelty, mob justice, ducks, road rage

That's right, I said it, "Fuck the Olympics". The Olympic Games have changed from being an global event in the spirit of international goodwill and fair competition and are now about money, money, money. In fact, in this recent thread on MetaFilter, I refer to the Olympic Committee as monetary terrorists because its really what they are.

They bestow the honor of the Olympic games on a country and then spend the next six or seven years making them leap through ridiculous and expensive hoops. The latest new hoops they want to force on the UK for the 2012 Olympic Games? They want to make it illegal to use the words like like "games", "medals", "gold", "2012", "sponsor" or "summer" in any form of advertising unless those using the terms are official (and by official that means they've paid for the privilege and paid handsomely for it!) sponsors. They want businesses with Olympic in their name to change their names permanently. They want a mountain range to be temporarily changed because its got Olympic in its name. They want to be able to fine transgressors as much as twenty thousand pounds.

The Olympic Committee is completely out of control, its a horribly corrupt and poorly managed group that behaves like a landless dictatorship in their proclamations and requirements.

And that doesn't even touch on the games themselves. One, allowing professional athletes to compete, as in the "Dream Team", pro baseball players (woops, don't have to worry about that anymore since they canned baseball and softball), pro hockey players and the like, letting these professional athletes compete with amateur athletes is the most agregious breach of the Olympic spirit I can think of.

These professionals have absolutely no business competing amongst amateurs. Its is an insult to the spirit of competition when the Dream Team players' salaries are more than some of the entire COUNTRIES they are competing against. How is that parity? How is that fair? How is that even competitive? Its not and the fact that they are allowed to play in the games is extraordinarily bothersome.

Two, dropping baseball and softball is ridiculous. These are two sports with monstrous followings around the world. And yet there are incredibly stupid sports left in the games like distance walking, handball (handball?), shooting (seems kind of stupid with the draconian gun laws around the world nowadays) and yachting.

I'm sure there are plenty more knocks against the Games but these are plenty to get started with. The Games are no longer about friendly competition, they are about huge, huge revenue streams, megamillion dollar tv deals and under the table kickbacks. As such, my interest has waned tremendously in the last few years. If I wanted to watch professional basketball players playing then I'd watch the NBA but I can't stand basketball. If I wanted to watch pro hockey, I'd, well, I'd wait until the NHL gets its collective head out of its butt and gets a season going again.

Is there any reasonable argument for allowing professional athletes to compete in the games? Or is just the same old lame crap that other countries were doing it? I think I will make an effort to avoid the Olympics from here on out. There's no point in giving the Olympic Committee more power than they have already assumed.
Tags: stop the olympic committee, stop the olympic games, olympics, out of control, fuck the olympics, Dream Team millionaires, monetary terrorists

I saw this earlier today too, Crosses vandalized at antiwar mom's Texas camp site.

What kind of a true shitheel do you have to be to drive over the symbolic markings of dead soldiers? Man, oh man, oh man. Some days I just can't believe that people can be so ugly to each other. Cindy Sheehan's not breaking any laws, she's trying to be as considerate as possible in seeking answers about the death of her son and some asshole drives over her crosses? That's cold, bold, sick and wrong.

Just like Bush's neighbor who is frustrated by the protest so he shoots his shotgun in the air. Now, let's forget for a second that I think George W. Bush is a war criminal and an embarrassment to his family, the nation, the presidency and the human race. But he's still the president and we have one of his neighbors discharging a dangerous weapon on his vicinity? Larry Mattlage, the shotgunner, says he wasn't threatening anyone, adding, "This is Texas." Which, of course, makes total sense. In Texas, you can shoot your gun at any time, its just like honking your horn or flipping the bird, just with a little extra Texas-sized force behind it. Um yeah. Remind me to detour around the Loon Star State next time I'm headed across country, alright?
Tags: Sheehan, war on terror, Texas, shotgun

Here's A nominee for the sicko hall of fame. What kind of scumbag do you have to be to send fake emails to the relatives of victims of last December's tsunami telling them that their relative is alive and well?

Man, there are some sad and depraved assholes inhabiting the planet.
Tags: tsunami, hoax, scumbag

Post Drops Plan to Promote Pentagon Event, the Freedom March, the Pentagon's combined commemoration and recruitment drive all in one has lost a sponsor in the Washington Post. Because the event is offensive to the memory of those who died on 9/11.

Also, it should be noted, again, that Osama bin Laden is responsible for 9/11. He's still running free. Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11 and we took over his country. Its important to keep those facts in mind given the ever nastier spin from the GOP about the war on terror.

The best alternative I've heard of so far for 9/11 is to make some homemade cookies and deliver them to your local firehouse or police station. Let those who serve, protect and save know that their loss (along with the greater loss of life) is still felt deeply by the people. Their sacrifice should not be in vain and it should not be a recruitment tool for the military to continue their illegal oil war.
Tags: war on terror, Freedom March, offensive, 9/11, Washington Post, recruitment

First, create your own rocket pack like James Bond had in Thunderball and then make sure you've got your video camera set before you do the Stuck throttle test. Warning, this video is funny enough to get you in trouble in the office because you will laugh out loud (I woke up the baby watching it last night) so watch it at your own risk.

The joy of the internets, it used to be only a handful of people could see your colossal screwups. But not anymore! via.
Tags: jet pack, stuck throttle, funny

Please shoot me before this happens to me. Freezing to death in a plane and then having that plane auger into the top of a mountain? Wow, how awful a way to die.

Cyprus plane crash victims "frozen solid", it is appearing that the plane crash in Greece was caused by a serious malfunction of the air circulation system and that the passengers and crew of the flight were dead well before they hit the ground, frozen solid in their seats.

And that, my friends, is a pretty horrible way to die. One of the passengers sent a text message to a friend before they died that the pilot was blue and they were freezing to death. How terribly, terribly sad.
Tags: cypriot, Greece, plane crash, malfunction

I got one of these through a catalog because it sounded cool and didn't cost an arm and a leg. And I was feeling mildly indulgent so I mildly indulged. I got a Battery Free Wireless Optical Mouse f