Intellectual Poison

Can someone explain to me how and why people walking on a path tend to walk far enough apart so that they block the path for other people?

I ride my bicycle on the river paths around Santa Cruz several times a week and invariably come across a group of people who seem to think its okay to block the path in both directions with their party and some have even gotten indignant with me when I ask them to make room so I can get by them and continue my ride. This happens on the river path, on West Cliff (a great, great bike ride along the bay) and most everywhere else people and bikes go in this town.

I'm tempted to just blow right by them as that's about level of consideration they're showing for other people.

Maybe I need to get a bell or horn on my bike or maybe even a siren? Whatever though because there will always be assholes who behave as if they own everything and I'm just squatting in their universe.

These people are only slightly less annoying than homeless people who cross roads one at a time, spread out far enough so that they keep you stopped for absolutely as long as possible. But I love it when they inconvenience you and then try to ask you for money. Yeah, that'll happen in this universe.
Tags: obstructionists, myopia, bike ride

or, Gun Control Isn't Hitting What You Aim At

I'm sure that this new law set to go into effect on October 1st (Happy Birthday, Leblanc! And no, this is definitely not my birthday present for you) won't result in many, many accidental shootings in Florida, this new legislation that allows a nervous resident to start blasting away rather than check and actually make sure there's a real danger.

Smart thinking, Jeb, who says its a "good, common sense, anti-crime issue". Yeah. Here's more from the article,

"Under the previous law gun owners had first to attempt to withdraw and avoid a confrontation, and were authorized to shoot the threatening individual inside their home or property."

But not anymore, now you can get your anger up, blast away and it's okay! Hoorah for idiocy!

And the supporters of this new law are pissed off that Jim Brady's organization, Shoot First Law is spreading the word about this insanity. Here's some helpful advice for if you get in a traffic accident

"If you are involved in a traffic accident or near-miss, remain in your car and keep your hands in plain sight. If someone appears to be angry with you, maintain to the best of your ability a positive attitude, and do not shout or make threatening gestures," the ad reads.

And don't you worry, the tourism board of Florida is on the case too. But not on the side of the Brady group.

"The Brady Campaign is one group's political agenda and not a safety and education issue," fumed Bud Nocera, executive director of Visit Florida, the state's tourism office, who described it as a "scare tactic" campaign.

"It is sad that such an organization would hold the 900,000 men and women who work in the Florida tourism industry, and whose lives depend on it, hostage, to their political agenda," he added.

Um, Bud? Yeah, it will. There's no effing way I'd take my family to Florida for a vacation after this law is put in place. So yeah, your tourism industry should and will suffer for this incredibly stupid law but I think its even more ridiculous that you're angry with a group trying to help prevent unnecessary shootings in your state because those tend to send people home fast. Remember the people who were preying on rental cars for a while? What did all of that do for your tourism? Just about killed it, didn't it?
Tags: shootfirstlaw, Florida, Jeb Bush, Jim Brady, gun control

You what makes my blood boil? Smokers who don't seem to be able to make the cognitive leap between the nasty cigarette butt in their hands and the fact that its garbage and the fact that they are littering when they throw that, usually still lit, butt out their window and into the street.

I was treated to some old asshole in his Caprice Classic this morning, puffing away and then throwing the smoking butt out his window when he was done. I was highly tempted to ram him from behind and then slap him around. Just as I was also sorely tempted to call his plate in to the cops for littering. And the kicker? The kicker was that he had a bumper sticker that read "Stop Litters, Spay Critters" about having your animal neutered. I guess he's taken a stand against pet overpopulation but not throwing his garbage out the window of his car.

I don't get it, I don't get how people who smoke cannot regard the nasty leftover poison-filled filter as anything but the worst kind of chemical-laden trash there is. What mental calistenics have they have to do to convince themselves that they are not part of the problem? That their little cigarette butt tossing is being repeated a million times a day in California. That all of those disgusting little butts end up in our water supply. That they are litterbugs.

I did have my vindication one time with an ashole smoker on a scooter who threw her butt in the street right next to me. I shouted at her "Thanks for throwing your garbage into the street, bitch" and she nearly leapt out of her skin. Maybe if more smokers were called out publicly on their lame ass littering behaviour, they'd be more likely to, you know, use their fucking ashtray instead of the street?
Tags: smokers, littering, litterbug

Want to see how warped a trailer can make a movie?

Check out the remixed trailer for Shining (link is to embedded .mov), a new take on Steven King's The Shining, its enough to make you puke and then try to drown yourself in it. And by that I mean that it is superbly done and funny in a slap-happy kind of way. via
Tags: remix, The Shining

The alternate title for the post is: Does Hallmark have any cards apologizing for shoving a broom handle up someone's ass and calling it hazing?
The Globe and Mail reports McGill footballers apologize to rookie for hazing which included being made to chew on a dog bone while a "teammate" prodded his anus with a sawed off broom handle while his other "teammates" watched and cheered it all on.

"Although McGill says the incident is still under investigation and remains one person's allegations, team veterans already wrote to the alleged victim to apologize."

And someone ought to let the university know that they can stop investigating the reality of the incident since the assholes who did the hazing have already written an apology letter (which is usually a good indication that they're guilty as fuck).

I understand peer pressure and I understand the desire to be a part of something, be it a football team or geek club. But anytime part of the initiation ritual involves public humiliation and sodomy, you can take your little team or club (or broomhandle for that matter) and shove it right up your own ass. I don't need to be part of your crew that badly.

Also, until McGill University expels the students responsible for the hazing, I will refer to them as Broomstick U.
Tags: hazing, McGill, football, sodomy

Reading through this proposed rebudgeting after Katrina destroyed New Orleans makes me absolutely sick to my stomach. RSC BUDGET OPTIONS 2005. I read somewhere that if the '01 and '03 tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans were repealed then it would save something on the order $463 BILLION dollars over the next ten years. But I guess its easier to cut funding for school science and math programs than to rollback stupid ass tax cuts for the obscenely wealthy.

And we could save $8 billion a year right now by verifying that people taking earned income tax credits actually deserve to take them? Why hasn't this been being done for years?

Go on, read the Budget Options and see just how sick they make you feel and then ask yourself why people would elect these morons in the first place. And then ask yourself if you're going to vote for these crooked fucks again. And, if you are going to vote for them again, ask yourself why you hate America so much that you want to see it utterly destroyed.

"And taxpayers, taxpayers, take it in the rear" - Warren Beatty as Jay Bulworth in Bulworth
Tags: budget, katrina, rebuilding

While this may appear to be a follow up to the post below about censorship and book burning, its actually a result of having visited a blog that censored my fairly innocuous comments about their situation.

And its gotten me to wondering how much censoring is going on without anyone noticing?

Do you monkey with people's comments? Do you edit them or delete them if they say something you don't like?

From my own part, I've deleted very, very few comments over the years since I started Intellectual Poison. The only ones that I can think of were from one-hit trolls who basically found the site by search, read something they disagreed with, shat in the comments and left. No great loss.

I've not deleted comments I didn't agree with but I have edited comments that needed clarification or needed to have html fixed or glaring spelling errors but I've not changed the content or tenor of anyone's comments. Which may or may not be true, I seem to remember some troll a while ago who would leave long stupid circular rants. Those got deleted almost immediately.

But what about you? Do you delete or garden your comments?

What about sites you visit? Do you make a habit of not visiting sites with reputations for twisting comments or deleting them altogether? And yes, this was precipitated by an actual event but, since I'm a jerk, I'm not going to go into it here or there or anywhere. So there.
Tags: censorship, blogs, comments

Censorship is alive and well in the US of A. Norwood school books banned, destroyed.

Complaints about profanity in the book, "Bless Me, Ultima," (now #75 on the List of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books from 1990-2000) which is on a required reading list prompted the school superintendent to confiscate the books and turn them over to the parents, who promptly burned them. The story is still developing at WikiNews.

Do these parents think that they've destroyed every copy of the book and that they're children are now safe from the book's contents? That their children couldn't get a copy of the book off, say, Amazon or eBay? That their kids won't be exposed to the same concepts addressed in the book? I know if I were a high school student just starting to realize that adults don't act in your best interest, especially when they say they are, and that this book banning would make me be very interested in what frightened them so much that they burned the only copies of the book in town. Maybe that's just me but damn, if they're so scared of it then there's gotta be something worth reading in it. And that's why censorship is a massive waste of time, it fosters more dissent.

And censorship is really nothing but manifested fear.
Tags: censorship, book burning, fear

Government moves slowly, slowly enough so that a guilty fucknob like Tom DeLay and continue to work and infect people with his amoral beliefs and actions. But government usually catches up eventually (even with a shitheel like Bush at the wheel trying to plow into everything he can). And today, government caught up as DeLay Indicted in Campaign Finance Probe which is the beginning of the end of his career.

And Bill Frist, yeah, you're done too. Now shut up and take your lumps you moron insider trading quack. No Oval Office for you unless the cell you get is oval.

The wheels are starting to come off of the Republican machine. They've completely and utterly screwed up on many fronts and their own lies are starting to come back and bite them. Good, piss off more of the nation so that there's not even a hint of a question of your retaining power in the next elections. That is, assuming the majority of Americans are sick and tired of the same old bullshit from BushCo. Well, are you sick and tired of it America? Are you ready for something new? Are you ready for some elected officials who actually give a damn about all Americans, not just the ones with hundreds of millions of dollars?

And believe me, these corruption issues, these utter lack of ethics problems, these insider trading stock scandals won't go away. These are people who are so thoroughly corrupt that they've convinced themselves they're working for the good of the people by "gaming the system" when, in reality, they don't give a damn about the people, they care only about extending their power and influence and adding another zero to their bank accounts.
Tags: corruption, indictment, Tom DeLay, Bill Frist

Apple Customers Complain Of Faulty iPod Nano because the pretty little buggers don't stay pretty for very long. Apparently they scratch incredibly easily and the nice little screens have a habit of cracking. People aren't abusing them at all, one guy says he's treated his Nano as delicately as possible but its still scratched and looking nowhere near as nice as it did when new.

And I don't get it, I don't get how Apple allowed this to happen? Why would they release a product with obvious and known defects? Why wasn't this shit caught in testing? This is a repeat of the stupid and clumsy mistakes they made with the Cube a few years ago. A beautiful and elegant and useful computer marred by flaws in its design that made it look like crap quickly.

Its just stupid and I'd expect better from a company like Apple that's obsessed with getting it right the first time. Its part of what differentiates them from companies like Microsoft that intentionally release substandard products so they can upgrade them later. It bothers me when Apple does things that make them look as clumsy and stupid as Microsoft.
Tags: Apple,iPod, Nano, defect, scratches, Microsoft

Among the many things I have sort of adopted as part of my work place regimen, things like stocking paper in the crappy printer but not too much or it jams but no one else ever seems to grasp that. One of those things I do is to keep some decent hand soap in our bathroom because the office supplied liquid soap smells strong enough to strip paint.

I replaced the wafer of soap yesterday with a new bar of vanilla scented glycerin soap in the nearly positive knowledge that I won't be around to do it again. I'm not quite how it makes me feel, on the one hand I'm ready to move on and start something new and on the other hand I don't want to throw in the towel on everything I've done with the company to this point as I still feel like we're on the cusp of really exploding in a good way.

But no, there are times when you can see your path in front of you and I can see my path leading me to other doors and other opportunities.
Tags: soap, work, moving on

Porn shoot stuns tourists which contains this gem of an explanation ""They said they weren't doing it for commercial reasons but that they wanted to see how visitors would react," police said."

Yeah, and the next time I start masturbating in public, its not commercial, I just want to see how people react.

What idiots. Also note that this "porn shoot" took place inside a ferris wheel gondola where there's pretty well nowhere else to go. And these three assholes wanted to get a reaction? I wish the tourists had had some pepper spray as I can't imagine the reaction they would have gotten if they sprayed some pepper spray on the woman's coochie. You know, just to see how she would react, like the amateur "pornographers" wanted to elicit. I mean, turnabout is fair play, isn't it?
Tags: idiots, porn, tourists

Oh sure, they keep bleating again and again that they won't play the "Blame Game" but everytime someone in the Bush administration opens their mouth about the Katrina Clusterfuck, they push the blame further and further away. Brown Blames 'Dysfunctional' Louisiana for the Katrina disaster. He blames the Department of Homeland Security, he blames Mayor Nagin, he blames Governor Blanco.

He blames himself, sort of, with this quote, "My biggest mistake was not recognizing by Saturday that Louisiana was dysfunctional," two days before the storm hit, Brown told the panel. That is, those people are fucking stupid retards and I should have noticed it sooner. But no, they're not playing the Blame Game, its not a game at all, they're trying to spread their fucking ridiculously lame ass response on other people instead of taking responsibility for it themselves, as men and women of honor and dignity do.

But we're not dealing with an adminstration that holds honor and dignity and national pride as anything beyond tools to suppress and mislead the public with lies and photo ops. "Mission Accomplished" indeed.

Michael Brown is guilty of many things, not the least of which is being a truly pathetically shitty head of FEMA and, as a result of his incompetency, alot of people died that didn't have to. He should be help accountable for those deaths.
Tags: Michael Brown, Bush, hyperbole, katrina, hurricane, disaster, FEMA

I think one of the main problems facing people today is that not enough people exist in the here and now. They're constantly thinking ahead or thinking back and not participating in the present.

The angry commuter on the road who intentionally drives like an asshole is still angry though the argument was a ten minutes ago, or a half hour. He's not in the present, he's in the passed and he's pissed.

Conversations where the other person's attention wanders, they're thinking about their upcoming evening or Friday night or about hitting the beach on Saturday. They're not giving you their attention, much less full attention.

Its an easy but very important thing to remind yourself to do. Don't abandon the now to exist in the past or the future, Be Here Now. Don't Be Here later, Don't Be Here yesterday. Be Here Now. And don't cut off people on the highway so much.
Tags: Be Here Now

Why yes, yes you can and its called Orthorexia which looks similar to anorexia, which is an unhealthy fixation with not eating at all.

I'm reminded of a commercial for yet another weight loss plan, I think it might have been Weight Watchers (which had the excellent taste to NOT hire Kirstie Alley to hawk their meals because she is so fucking annoying I'd rather be fat than purchase any damned thing she's endorsing). The commercial shows mostly women but a few men trying to get through their day while chained to a bathroom scale. Like getting on a bus and banging the scale on the steps and getting the raised eyebrow treatment. Or walking down the street and making dogs cock their head to one side.

And the way to break the chains that bind you to thinking about your weight? Why that would be a Weight Watchers breakfast cereal that promises to instantly make you stop thinking about your weight. Sure, its yet another load of crap but it's a memorable commercial.
Tags: orthorexia, anorexia, eating disorder

This is in a presently empty but likely soon to be filled with another house lot down the street from my friend's house in Santa Cruz. I used my sunglasses as a rough filter to get the orange sky effect.

Here we sit on the cusp of a brand new week, a week with alot of interesting and crazy stuff happening. Tomorrow should be interesting in its own way, we'll see in a few hours.

Wednesday will be exciting because I'm going to go and walk some potential property. I'm not overly optimistic but it sure sounds like it would work for our needs and maybe even a little more than that. And then we'll be into next weekend again just like that.
Tags: santa cruz, real estate, work

Note, this is political, this is political satire, this is making stuff up and calling it humor. You may not find it funny and that's fine, everyone thinks they have a sense of humor when many people do not. Or you could just find me unfunny and that would make me sad but oh well, can't please all the people all the time so I'm just going to please myself all the time.
How can this administration perform more poorly and be even less stable than they are now?

Why, give George some liquor, of course. According to the mediabistro: FishBowlDC there are some (completely unsubstantiated) rumours swirling around that Georgie got ahold of the key to the liquor cabinet. And then all hell broke loose. I was able to secure a few moments with the president just after he upended his half empty bottle of Jack, gulped the rest down and then flung the bottle against the wall, cackling wildly as the glass exploded. His (non)-responses are in italics.

"Mr. Bush..." I began.
"Call me George Porgy Pudding Pie or I won't answer any of your questions."
"Okay, George Porgy Pudding Pie," I began again but was cut off by his explosive laughter that sounded more like a machine gun being fired than mirth.
"George Porgy Pudding Pie, I'd like to know what has precipitated this return to the bottle knowing your checkered past with the fire water?"
"Precipi-what? What the hell does that word mean? Are you trying to make me be stupid or something? And the white man doesn't drink fire water, only Injuns and people from Cleveland."
"Okay, sir, if you say so, so," and he cocked an eye brow at me as if exhorting me to say it again, "George Porgy Pudding Pie, what made you start drinking again?"
"What didn't make me start drinking again? The public won't just believe the ridiculous crap I say and mis-say. Turd Blossom's going to have to be sacrificed. Brownie screwed up Katrina and didn't protect Trent Lott's house, Iraq is in shambles and Osama's still sending me nasty emails taunting me and calling me Alfred E. Bush. Why not get drunk?"
"Good point, sir. But don't you think your responsibility is to keep as clear a head as possible for the good of the nation? Especially with Rita bearing down on Texas as we speak and you drool?"
"Rita? I knew some girls named and Marge and Rita that partied together like nobody's business back at Yale or maybe they were from Harvard? Anyway, they had a great thing going. One would walk around with tequila, the other with the margarita mix and they'd make guys sit down, put their heads back and they'd administer an instant margarita in your mouth. And one of them had really big boobs and she'd lean down over you while pouring the tequila in your mouth, that was pretty cool, booze and boobs in one stop!"
"That's fascinating, sir. About Hurricane Rita though?"
"Hurricanes? Oh yeah, we used to drink those like water down at Pat O'Brien's, now Pat's is underwater. The world is a fucked up place and you can quote me on that."
"Yes, sir, George Porgy Pudding Pie, sir. But I was asking about your thoughts on the hurricane named Rita that's slowly moving towards the coast of Texas?"
"Texas? Hey, I'm from Texas, did you know that? A great little place called Crawford where I've got a huge ranch that I can shoot stuff on and hunt and fish and hide from mean mothers of dead soldiers."
"Okay, thanks for your time, sir. I'll see myself out."

And, as I walked away from him, he was starting to shrug himself out of his clothes, right down to his loin cloth. The door was closing and I could see the loin cloth was coming off too, the surprising thing is that none of the dozen or so people in the room paid him the least mind at all, as if it happened everyday.

I would have started grinning as I walked away and heard the loud hooting from his office and then I remembered that this man is the most powerful man in the world and he's drunk, naked and just as stupid as ever. At least they knew enough to keep the nuclear football away from him while he was shitfaced. He might just nuke Massachusetts if they let him.

And they're still trying to clean the poop off the ceiling of the Oval Office.
Tags: boozy, satire, politics, stupid

October 6th is a personal Emancipation Day for me. As any of you out there struggling with the repayment of student loans, you're about to get jealous and bitter. By the way, frenemy is a cool new word I learned from Digital Di, it will be added to the Fictionary soon too, I've been accumulating new words and its almost ready for another installment.

On October 6th my student loans will cease to exist in any meaningful way. For a wee final payment of $68.25 I will complete the repayment of my student loans and only 5 1/2 years after completing college. Which means I've been kicking them $250 a month for 66 months. Which also means I'd be about a quarter of the way done if I hadn't been put in a position to pay them off all at once. But I was fortunate enough to be able to bash them down all at once and now they're about to go away for good forever!

Do you think the loan consolidation offers are going to stop now that there are no loans to consolidate? I didn't think so either.
Tags: student loan, emancipation, debt-free, frenemy

So I had a guy ask me if I could spare him a couple of bucks so he could get a beer the other day. He wasn't homeless, or hadn't been homeless long enough to look scruffy. I think he just wanted to upgrade his lunch a little bit and had no problems asking strangers to donate to his cause.

Needless to say (though I'm saying it anyway) he didn't get a damned penny from me and barely even got the courtesy of a reply. I'm not sure how to even think about someone who supplements his meals this way. Its irritating that people ask for money randomly when they aren't really begging, they're just light then and seem to have no issue with "spot begging" to get to where they feel they should be.

Almost like the person who asks if you have change for a dollar when they don't have a dollar to trade you, they just want to see if you have change and then they ask if they can have it. Sorry, no, no you can't. The easy argument is why would I work to give someone who's not working and not trying to get work my money? Its illogical. But I know there are exceptions, I know there are people living on the streets who don't really have a choice. And there's one guy near my work that I do give a buck to on occasion. But there's no chance in hell I'm ever giving any money to the kids who spend all day everyday in the park across the river part time begging because they're too cool to get jobs and actually take care of themselves (yes, an assumption, woops).
Tags: beggar, lunch, supplement, transient, begging, need vs. want

The next few days are going to be busy, the kind of busy that sucks and makes me want to smack people who ask stupid questions or drag out meetings. And, for the next couple of days, I will letting people know to not waste my damned time. Because every minute of my time they waste is another minute later I'll have to stay at the end of the day to get some of my shit crossed off my lists.

And there's alot of other things going on in the office right now that would certainly bear telling but I can't really tap it right yet. Things will have to play out for a little bit before it makes any sense to report any of it here.

The list of high priority tasks is long, intricate and will require some long days through the end of the week. But the skinny of it at the end of the day is that I need to move on and find another place to ply my trade. Its premature to open my own freelance PR/Marketing shop but that's something I'd very much like to do at some point. The allure of working for myself and being able to choose who I work with is very powerful. Then again, the fear of failing (and accompanying financial distress) is just as strong which is part of the reason why it'll have to wait for now. But there are other options to explore right now and some of them might just turn out for me.

But today? Today is going to be a grind. So's tomorrow, so's Friday and probably Saturday as well. Don't you wish you had my job? I wish you had my job.

PS. Happy Birthday, Dad, wherever you are. You'd be 68 today if the cancer hadn't gotten you a few years ago. You're missed terribly, I think about you everyday and would have loved to introduce you to my son because I see so much of you in him. And he's a fantastic kazoo player which would make you laugh.
Tags: work, busy, office politcs

Tons of British Food for Katrina Victims to be Incinerated

More red tape embarrassment for the Katrina relief effort. This time, tons of food donated by the UK is set to be incinerated rather than delivered to hungry evacuees. The FDA recalled the food rations, which had been loaded onto trucks and sent out for distribution, because they had been "condemned as unfit for human consumption". Never mind the glaring fact that these are the same food rations being eaten by British soldiers in Iraq right now. via
Tags: katrina, embarrassment, botched relief, donated food, incineration, United Kingdom, UK, donations

You knew it was coming, it had to. The backlash against the makeover shows that take ugly ducklings and reinvent them as swans.

Well, what happens when an ugly duckling is told she's ugly, told she can be made into a Hollywood princess and begins down the path only to find her makeover cancelled because the healing time for her jaw would be too long? In this instance, she eventually committed suicide and now her sister, who started the whole process, is suing "Extreme Makeover" for effectively getting her hopes up and then smashing them upon the wall of scheduling.

When so many people are so hopeful of getting the magical makeover treatment there will have to be people that do not make the cut for whatever reason. And I highly doubt the shows spend much time in debriefing the passed over ones. They just say "sorry" and get back to work on the ugly duckling that can be made pretty in time for the show. It may not be fair but who says life's fair?
Tags: backlash, makeover, ugly, lawsuit, suicide

There are some things that are so wholly good in and of themselves that they rise above the rest of the universe. Things like an adorable little 14 1/2 month old little boy getting into a new and clean and cute set of pajamas.

Well Graydon got a new set of pj's in preperation for the coming cold, windy and wet winter season. And he is simply too flippin' cute for words in them. They've got baseballs, basketballs, footballs and #10's all over them and it just about kills us seeing him waddle/walk around in them.

Both P and I remark to each other regularly how simply amazingly sweet and cute our little boy is. He's got a great personality though he gets crabby when his teeth are hurting.

There's something just wholesome and wonderful spending quality time hanging out with the little guy as he absorbs his universe. And he makes my heart just explode with love for him when he toddles over to me, puts his arms up and just wants to sit in my arms and relax for a little while with his daddy.
Tags: pajamas, baby, cute, parenting, love

Liquid Sculpture is just that, objects "sculpted" by the camera lens, captured in a moment that would otherwise be lost. The titles are awful but the images are magnificent.
Tags: liquid, photography, sculpture, impressive

Take 50,000 speech bubbles and glue them all over the city on advertisments, wait a week or two, come back and take pictures of what people wrote in those speech bubbles and then create a website called Speech Bubbles to let people wander through a slice of the American pysche.

It's brilliant, funny, telling and really, really interesting.

Well son a bitch, the site's been taken down since yesterday. I guess the attention the MeFite's gave it broke it or something. Anyway, check it out when it comes back, it is worth a look.
Tags: urban monkeywrench, social experiment, speech bubbles, culture scrapping, culture

To some people today is Talk Like a Pirate Day and that's well and good and fine and dandy for them. But, for me, today is Bad Dexterity Day or Get Your Fingers Jammed Day or Bashing Body Parts Accidentally Day.

Anyway you slice it, today's been a rough one for my body. The latest casualty to the day was accidentally mashing my left index finger up against the edge of my desk. It purpled up pretty quickly but isn't broken and now the purple's gone away. It still aches a bit and I'm still pissed off that I mashed it.

On another note, today was also the first day I've been able to mount my GPS unit on my cruiser bike so I can track my lunch rides a little more easily. The first revelation is that seeing my speed, average speed, moving speed, elevation changes and route all marked out nicely makes me go faster. Alot faster. I also verified that my route is longer than the Google Maps told me it was, by about a half mile round trip. Now the next step is loading up the map from today into the computer and posting that, but I need an adapter to connect the GPS unit to my non-serial port equipped Mac.

And, as a result of the lunch ride with the GPS, I've come up with a new term to describe how having the feedback goads me to greater efforts, its called GPS motivation.

Now I just need to find a three or five speed rear hub to give my cruiser longer legs and I'll be able to rip it up all over town. Actually, I'll also need one of these so I can bring along my little boy on my rides too. Speaking of which, has anyone had any experience with one of these style child bike seats that put the child in front of you? I'd think it was way better for the kid but would love some feedback on that.
Tags: mash your fingers day, talk like a pirate day, GPS, motivation, child bike seat

Some unknown actress named Tess Smith for her far too over-revealing curtain inspired hoochie dress (now with easy access coochie panels).

Lady, I don't know who gave you the crack you smoked before leaving the house in this outfit but you should sue them because that dress makes you look like trash. But then, I'm sure she's gotten alot of attention and attention equals job offers in Hollywoodland so she's actually come out of this alot better off then she went in. And yes, that does sort of depress me some more. Just like the asshole baggage handler/rapper who has gotten alot more famous and made alot more money since he was fired from his baggage handling airport job because he raps about flying planes into buildings and killing people in Allah's name and other stupid shit.

Publicity equals noteriety equals mo'money, mo'money, mo'money. So, I guess she did the right thing in wearing the wrong dress.
Tags: inappropriate

I don't know what Sziget Festival is aside from being about music but they have some pretty phenomenal Panoramic Images to check out. My two favorites are Lightmare and Belly Dancing (both are direct links to 1.7 MB panos).

And, in retrospect, I should have tried to shoot a pano or two at the Santa Cruz County Fair yesterday. But I did get this all wasn't lost. This was part of a dog team called Extreme Dogs (with their travelling companion Racing Pigs) and this particular leaping hound was quite impressive. Not only because he taught himself to do twisting backflips to catch frisbees but because this particular pup is 12 years old and still kicking ass and catching major air.
sziget, festival, panorama, belly dancing, county fair, frisbee dog, airtime

Pictorial counterattack may prove blow to Moss via the Mirror. Kate Moss sued the UK's Daily Mirror for claiming that she once fell into a cocaine-induced coma. Well, now the Mirror has published pictures of Moss laying out lines from a big bag kept in her handbag and the snorting some of those lines with her boyfriend, Pete Doherty.

Maybe this will help explain how she can turn invisible when she turns to the side?

With the Mirror preparing another installment for today, executives at Burberry, Chanel, Dior and Rimmel, for which Moss models, have to be concerned. Ya think?
Tags: Kate Moss, cocaine, lawsuit, revenge

Like we don't have enough shit to worry about, now we have to worry about lead in vinyl lunchboxes?

Center for Environmental Health: Lead in Children's Lunch Boxes details some lawsuits being filed in California against Toys “R” Us, Warner Brothers, DC Comics, Time Warner, Walgreens, and others involve many lunch boxes featuring beloved children’s characters including Superman, Tweety Bird, Powerpuff Girls, and Hamtaro. Because some moron thought it was a good idea to make these products obviously designed for use by children to contain more than 90 times the legal limit for lead in children's products.

I'm sorry but WHAT THE FUCK? What could the idiot designers have been thinking or smoking?

I don't get it. I don't get how wickedly high levels of lead, well known to be seriously detrimental to children who ingest it, got into a children's product. Someone screwed up so badly that they should go to prison. Via.
Tags: lead poisoning, lunchbox, insane product design

The sadists at Ars Technica saw fit to get a pretty new iPod Nano and then proceed to beat the holy crap out of it to see how much abuse it could take before it stopped working completely.

Thanks to Jay for passing the hurtful link along. Which reminds me, I need to order one of these as a raffle giveaway item. The winner had better not treat it as poorly as these folks did though.
Tags: Apple, iPod, nano, abuse, ArsTechnica