March 2006 Archives

When I worked at McDonnell Douglas in the late '80s, there were these two married engineers - let's call them 'Cliff' and 'Karen' - who would 'sneak' out to Cliff's van just about every day at lunch hour for a nooner. It was pretty much an open secret among the group.

Sorry, I forgot to mention that they weren't actually married to each other.

It's a good thing they didn't go to a park for their trysts, because somebody would eventually have planned a group outing, like this one in Japan:

It's a tradition for Japanese to gather under the cherry blossoms [when they are in bloom, like they are at this time of year] and sing, dance and otherwise make merry.

. . .

"Our company maintains a strict ban on workplace fraternization between the sexes. One day, the boss suddenly upped and offered to take us all out flower-viewing. We'd all taken a toast when the boss said, 'Now I'll show you the real reason for why I brought you all here today,' and pointed off toward a secluded corner of the park. When I took a really good look, I realized the boss was pointing at one of my co-workers, who was having his own private hanami with one of the girls from the office. The boss turned back to us and said: 'That pair have broken company rules and I wanted you lot to be here to witness it all,'" a retail company worker tells Shukan Post. "The boss was really pleased with himself and got stuck right into the booze. He eventually went over and caught the young lovers 'red-handed.' The girl was eventually transferred off to the boondocks and the relationship was over."

Fire The Dump Button Guy!

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Like pretty much any 'live' broadcast radio show, Bob & Tom are actually broadcast with a electronic delay (I think it's seven seconds). This allows them to hit the 'dump' button if they or one of their guests say something that could cost them a lot of money. Their 'live' internet stream is actually delayed even more than the broadcast version, but as far as I know, it isn't censored (in the past, they've referred to the stream not being censored, but I almost never stream it so I don't know for sure). Of course, the FCC can't zing them for saying naughty words on an internet-streamed show (at least not yet). I think their podcast is censored, because I've heard them use the dump button (which is seven seconds of cartoonish sound effects) on several occasions. Of course, being a podcast, they don't have to, but apparently they do anyway.

Which is why I was pretty surprised to hear Tom say what he says here, and I really hope that didn't get out over the air.

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White Trash Wednesday

(Case Study 1 is here.)

The Wikipedia entry for Chav says this:

Chav is a slang term which has been in wide use throughout the United Kingdom since 2004. It refers to a subcultural stereotype of a person with fashions such as flashy "bling" jewellery and counterfeit designer clothes or sportswear, an uneducated, uncultured, impoverished background, a tendency to congregate around places such as fast-food outlets, bus stops, or other shopping areas, and a culture of antisocial behavior.

But enough theory. Let's see an application:

CHAV thug Leanne Black hurls eggs at newsmen yesterday before going berserk in a courtroom.

The obnoxious 14-year-old, who became Britain's youngest drink-driver when she was 12, was hauled before magistrates for being boozed-up at the wheel AGAIN.

The schoolgirl, wearing a white tracksuit, Burberry-style scarf and lots of fake bling, arrived armed with a box of eggs. She threw some at reporters, then pelted a TV crew as a man accompanying her punched a photographer in the face.

In court later Black, branded a "vicious little cow" by neighbours, screamed when she was told she would be locked up. She leaped from the dock, then:
  • PUNCHED prosecutor Lesley Gilmore in the back.
  • THREW a two-litre jug of water over the magistrates and their clerk.
  • KICKED furniture over as she sprinted around cowering probation officers.
  • SWEPT anything she could get her hands on from desks, and
  • YELLED abuse at the shocked JPs and court staff as she was finally grabbed and dragged off.

But how did she come to be in court?

Yesterday the youth court in Newbury, Berks, heard how the teenager swigged cans of beer at a pal’s house before driving off in her dad Maurice’s Vauxhall Corsa.

Her parents called police when they realised she was missing.

Cops found the girl at Newbury’s YMCA, where her sister Lilly lived, and collared her. Mrs Gilmore said: "Her response to arrest is concerning. She told the officer, "What the f*** do you lot want, for f***'s sake?"; She told the officer to "f*** off"".

The JPs heard how Black did exactly the same 14 months before. Then, she was banned from the road for two years; a technicality as she cannot drive legally until she is 17 . . ..

And here's the punch line, serving as another reminder that the justice system in the UK doesn't quite work like ours does:

She was also given another technical three-year driving ban. Any such ban comes into force immediately and cannot be “held over” until a youth reaches the legal driving age of 17.
So she's banned from doing something that she can't legally do until she's 17 anyway; moreover, when she turns 17, the three-year ban will be up and it's look out, motorists!

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"Legal?" What Is This "Legal" Of Which You Speak?

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Fox is trying to play it cagey, showing us previews of next week's 24 without Jack Bauer in them so we can't be sure he survived the explosion at the pretend gas company.

Well, I know he survived - he called in to Bob & Tom this morning!

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White Trash Wednesday

An update to a local WTW story from last June - Man pleads guilty to theft over dismembered cow:

A man accused of killing, dismembering and taking the legs off a cow last summer has pleaded guilty to a felon theft charge.

Nineteen-year-old Perry Dominguez, of Angola, will be sentenced May 22. A plea agreement filed in court Monday asks the judge to sentence Dominguez to two years in prison, but suspend all but six months.

The cow was found June 24 in a pasture by its owner, Terry Penick, on his farm near Orland about 40 miles north of Fort Wayne.

Court documents say the cow was stabbed and was missing its legs and throat.

I'll have a full WTW story later today, involving a British chick who's a real piece of work, and who appears to be irretrievably broken even though she's only 14.

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Channeling My Inner Language Nazi

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This may sound strange coming from someone who actually keeps a list of office-related neologisms, but I really really hate the pseudo-word "mentee" (which, surprise, doesn't even show up on webster.com unless you pay extra for their super-ginormous online dictionary).

The word is "protege." Get it right.

A lot of people are making fun of John Kerry's rider, but I read through it and didn't see anything too excessive for a senator and major Presidential candidate.

That is, until I spotted this on page 2:

  • Food - JK (for the time being) will not be eating spicy food or anything containing tomato, citrus or chocolate
No chocolate?

Communist.

Bruce Sterling gave the closing speech at SXSW earlier this month, which I was listening to as a podcast. Dude has a fairly advanced case of BDS, but the following part made me think. He was bemoaning how cities are having to pay to implement broadband and wireless themselves, saying that the federal government should be doing it.

And I look at wireless spreading in London, and the spread of broadband in Korea. I've got broadband in Serbia, where the phone companies are literally run by criminals in exile. And my broadband in Serbia costs $20 a month - and it works!

Our people in Washington are drinking their own bathwater. They have forgotten how to build anything. They are busy monetizing stuff for their re-election campaigns. It is decadent, it is sclerotic, it looks like the Soviet Union. These guys in power are so eager to monetize the net that they are turning the USA into a banana republic with rockets! Not just politically backward - technically backward! That's the part that's unforgivable.
Which, if you filter out the BDS, basically says "We're at risk of losing our technological superiority if the Federal Government doesn't step in." My first thought, South Park Republican that I am, was "That ain't Washington's job." My second thought was "Well, Washington (mostly) built the Interstates, and that worked fairly well, and NASA work has led directly to a lot of useful things, and of course the Internet exists because the DoD started research leading to it," so I was at least willing to listen further. Then he grunted out this turd:
The reality-based community are fatally easy to push around, mostly because they're so gentlemanly and ladylike, but when you actually ignore reality for years on end, the PAYBACK IS A BITCH, BROTHER! And I should know, because I'm a science fiction writer! [bold emphasis added, caps in original]
and I stopped listening, because if he thinks the 'reality'-based community is "gentlemanly and ladylike," he's got a reality disconnect at least as bad as those he's ranting against.

If you're interested in reading a transcript of the whole thing, you can find it here.

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I Knew That Wearing Depends Was A Good Idea

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The show last Friday night was superb. My thoughts:

  • Greg Warren was good but not great. He did the 'Flute Man Greg' bit that's de rigueur for him, but I was hoping to hear the bit where he calls his friend Huey (if you're a fan, you know what I'm talking about). Best one-liner: "A lot of American men have fantasies where the woman dresses up in a French maid's outfit. I wonder if a lot of French men have fantasies where the woman dresses up in a Taco Bell uniform."
  • Roy Wood Jr. did a bit that absolutely nailed a radio conversation between a traffic cop and his dispatcher (by which I mean "rapid-fire copspeak with only about every third word intelligible," just like on Cops). Best joke, in the context of Kobe Bryant's $4M diamond apology to his wife: "If I caught my wife in bed with another man and saw four million dollars on the dresser, I'd tap in and let her take a break and have some Gatorade. I ain't gay, but for four million dollars, I could be 'confused' for a night."
  • Donnie Baker didn't emcee; he actually did a set. And yes, he wore a pair of Zubaz. Damn funny as only Donnie Baker can be, but he kept on bobbing his head as he walked around and it got distracting after a while. I think he was trying to strut, but it didn't come off quite right. Best one-liner: "I once rubbed one off in a litter box just to see if it would clump."
  • Mike Armstrong does the best 'Devil-in-my-head' voice I've ever heard. He had two jokes worth repeating (actually, he had more; I just can't remember the others):
    • "I got my mother-in-law a TV and a stereo for Christmas. Boy, was she mad when Rent-A-Center came by the next week to pick them up."
    • "Here's a game you can play: go to a Catholic church for Christmas Eve midnight mass. When the priest comes by sprinkling the holy water on everyone, when it hits you, go [in his Devil voice] "AUUUUUGHH! IT BURNS! IT BURNS!"
    In what is perhaps the acid test for how much I like a comedian, I'll be buying his CD.
  • Frank Caliendo. Damn, what a voice talent. He must have done fifteen different impersonations during his set, and his Jim Rome, W, and John Madden voices were dead on. I don't really have a 'joke of the night' for him, but he did a five-minute pseudo-stream-of-consciousness bit that can best be described as "Robin Williams, in his prime, plus voices, minus cocaine." I laughed to a point well past incontinence and most of the way to anoxia.

Apparently the namesake of George Mason University isn't who I thought it was:

But even if George Mason was a single-digit seed instead of a No. 11, that probably wouldn't matter for historical purposes. This was the greatest run ever to the Final Four. End of discussion.

It's hard to gauge what this historic win has done for this university located just 20 miles from here [Washington, DC], one that is named after one of the founders of the U.S. Constitution, an idealist who refused to sign the document because he wanted the abolishment of slavery included (history lesson courtesy of head coach Jim Larranaga).

So apparently they weren't memorializing the gallant sacrifice of Jack Bauer's boss in Season 2.

As an aside, it also makes their win over my alma mater (you can't really call it an upset anymore, can you?) a little easier to accept.

On The Other Hand, Islam Doesn't Have E-Meters

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If you follow the fight against Islamofascism at all, you've undoubtedly heard of the case of Abdul Rahman, currently facing what could be the death penalty in Afghanistan for the 'crime' of converting from Islam to Christianity. Well, it just now occurred to me - if you try to leave Scientology, all they try to kill is your reputation (usually)!

But Will Donnie Be Wearing His Zubaz Pants?

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Chess, DA, and I are headin' out tonight to see the Friends of the Bob & Tom Show tour at the Embassy. Here's the bill, emceed by Donnie Baker (I think Donnie's hilarious (and he has his own Wikipedia page to boot), but why couldn't it be Kristi Lee?):

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Life Imitates Minority Report, Again

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The great Ron White, when describing his arrest for being "Drunk. In. PUB-lick.", said:

I wasn't drunk in Public. I was drunk in a bar. They THREW me into Public.

Turns out that's a distinction without a difference in Texas now. From Reuters via Bob & Tom:

SAN ANTONIO, Texas (Reuters) - Texas has begun sending undercover agents into bars to arrest drinkers for being drunk, a spokeswoman for the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission said on Wednesday.

The first sting operation was conducted recently in a Dallas suburb where agents infiltrated 36 bars and arrested 30 people for public intoxication, said the commission's Carolyn Beck.

Being in a bar does not exempt one from the state laws against public drunkenness, Beck said.
Due to the way the laws in Texas are written, a bar is actually considered a public place for the purposes of determining public intoxication, so it appears Beck has the law on her side, not that that makes it just or anything.

The 'Department of Precrime' part comes in because they're arresting people for something they might do:

The goal, she said, was to detain drunks before they leave a bar and go do something dangerous like drive a car.

"We feel that the only way we're going to get at the drunk driving problem and the problem of people hurting each other while drunk is by crackdowns like this," she said.

"There are a lot of dangerous and stupid things people do when they're intoxicated, other than get behind the wheel of a car," Beck said. "People walk out into traffic and get run over, people jump off of balconies trying to reach a swimming pool and miss."
So they want to arrest drunks, in bars, before they actually do anything wrong (note that I didn't say 'illegal,' I said 'wrong').

The logical extension of this position is that the only thing stopping the excise police from reaching into your home and dragging your drunken ass to the county lockup is that pesky Fourth Amendment.

Update: Swanky Conservative came up with the Minority Report reference before I did, but I swear I thought of the same connection on my own. Given the brouhaha over The M Zone's hilarious Wonderlic Test parody appearing without attribution on Colin Cowherd's ESPN Radio show, I thought it important to point that out.

Update: The policy is now under review. All hail the blogosphere!

So the mayor of Gary is resigining because $107k/year isn't enough to put two kids through college, so he needs a better-paying job:

GARY – Mayor Scott King announced Thursday he is resigning after 11 years in office, leaving his $107,000-a-year job to return to the private sector to earn more money to pay for his children’s college.

“This is a great job except for the pay,” he said. “I don’t know this for sure, but I think I’m one of the few mayors to take a pay cut coming into this job. Over the last 11 years, that fact has been a challenge.”
So that means he's probably going to have to go on interviews and stuff. How is he going to deal with the resume stain of being mayor of Gary for 11 years? (by the way, when someone from Cameroon says that Gary is a bad place to live, it gets your attention!)

He couldn't possibly be resigning for other reasons, can he?

In February 2004, three Gary officials were indicted for allegedly making false statements to federal investigators, including former deputy mayor Geraldine Tousant, whom King embraced during his news conference.

Charges against Tousant and Vaness Dabney, of the city's Redevelopment Department, were dropped. City Park Supt. Kimberly E. Lyles pleaded guilty last year and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

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Higher Taxes For Thee, But Not For Me

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That the Chomskybot is against pretty much everything that makes America America should come as no surprise to anyone to the right of Marx, but I figured that as a True Believer he'd actually practice what he preaches.

Not so much:

. . . Chomsky, with a net worth north of US$2-million, decided to create one [a trust] for himself. A few years back he went to Boston's venerable white-shoe law firm, Palmer and Dodge, and, with the help of a tax attorney specializing in "income-tax planning," set up an irrevocable trust to protect his assets from Uncle Sam. He named his tax attorney (every socialist radical needs one!) and a daughter as trustees. To the Diane Chomsky Irrevocable Trust (named for another daughter) he has assigned the copyright of several of his books, including multiple international editions.

Chomsky favours massive income redistribution -- just not the redistribution of his income. No reason to let radical politics get in the way of sound estate planning.

But how does a 'champion' of the poor and downtrodden accumulate a net worth measured in megabucks? Apparently, the 'rubber tofu' speaking circuit pays pretty well:

Chomsky's business works something like this. He gives speeches on college campuses around the country at US$12,000 a pop, often dozens of times a year.

. . .

Chomsky's marketing efforts shortly after Sept. 11 give new meaning to the term "war profiteer." In the days after the tragedy, he raised his speaking fee from US$9,000 to US$12,000 because he was suddenly in greater demand.
And of course there are his books - and by 'books' I mean 'bloviations that somebody had to type up:'
But books are Chomsky's mainstay, and on the international market he has become a publishing phenomenon. The Chomsky brand means instant sales. As publicist Dana O'Hare of Pluto Press explains: "All we have to do is put Chomsky's name on a book and it sells out immediately!"

Putting his name on a book should not be confused with writing a book because his most recent volumes are mainly transcriptions of speeches, or interviews that he has conducted over the years, put between covers and sold to the general public. You might call it multi-level marketing for radicals. Chomsky has admitted as much: "If you look at the things I write -- articles for Z Magazine, or books for South End Press, or whatever -- they are mostly based on talks and meetings and that kind of thing. But I'm kind of a parasite. I mean, I'm living off the activism of others. I'm happy to do it."

. . .

Seven Stories Press, a small publisher, pulled together interviews conducted via e-mail that Chomsky gave in the three weeks following the attack on the Twin Towers and rushed the book to press. His controversial views were hot, particularly overseas. By early December 2001, the publisher had sold the foreign rights in 19 different languages. The book made the best-seller list in the United States, Canada, Germany, India, Italy, Japan and New Zealand. It is safe to assume that he netted hundreds of thousands of dollars from this book alone.

OK, so now he's got piles of cash laying around the house. How does he make it work for him in a socially responsible way? Surely he invested it in one of those 'green' funds that don't invest in companies that do icky things, right?

Not so much.

Chomsky, for all of his moral dudgeon against American corporations, finds that they make a pretty good investment. When he made investment decisions for his retirement plan at MIT, he chose not to go with a money market fund or even a government bond fund. Instead, he threw the money into blue chips and invested in the TIAA-CREF stock fund. A look at the stock fund portfolio quickly reveals that it invests in all sorts of businesses that Chomsky says he finds abhorrent: oil companies, military contractors, pharmaceuticals, you name it.

'Hypocrite' doesn't seem strong enough a word here. Perhaps a linguist could prescribe a better one. Now all we have to do is find a linguist who actually, you know, linguisticates...

[H/T Chess]

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White Trash Wednesday

Hey, dumbass - Tigers? Do. Not. TALK!:

GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- A Florida fair worker was hospitalized Sunday after he put his hand into a tiger cage at the Putnam County Fair in an apparent attempt to "communicate" with the animal, Local 6 News reported.

Jason Wayne Hardin, 25, of Westville, stuck his arm into the tiger's cage about 2:25 a.m. Sunday, said Major Keith Riddick of the Putnam County Sheriff's Office.

Hardin told wildlife officers that he was putting up fencing at the fair when he decided to "communicate" with the animal, Local 6 News reported.

The white tiger bit the man and severed a tendon in Hardin's arm.

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Maybe I'm Not Going To Hell Just Yet...

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...because I'm too ashamed to repeat the first thing that popped into my head when I heard about this accident involving a bus full of special-needs students:

(Van Wert County - WANE) A school bus carrying special needs students crashed just before 9:00 a.m. this morning. Apparently the bus driver swerved to miss hitting a deer on Tulley-Harrison Road near Lincoln Highway and the bus overturned.

"We called for all the ambulances in Van Wert County, think we ended up with 15 ambulances in total here," said Convoy Fire Chief Don Wilson.

"There were some tears and upset students, because they didn't know what was going on, but the students were also to tell officers their names and ages," said Ohio State Police Lt. Gene Smith.

Thank God that nobody was seriously hurt.

Consider The Irony Of The Mastectomy Patient

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I've got to slow down a little. I was scanning the BBC RSS feed, which showed these two headlines:

  • Flash memory price 'to drop 25%'
  • Uneven breasts linked to cancer
but what I saw was
Flash uneven breasts to drop cancer 25%

Headin' on down to the Legion post to get my Irish on. In the unlikely event I post again in the next 36 hours, it'll likely be unintelligible anyway.

(note to Chess - it's the Legion post across the street from Shoaff. Hell, you could probably walk there!)

We used to worship a CDC Cyber 170 Model 750 when I was at Michigan State - and I mean that almost literally. We called the computer center the Cyber Castle, and there was a viewing room where you could watch the various vestmented (OK, lab-coated) acolytes and deacons tend to the Cyber. Since the room had steps along each wall (for better viewing for the vertically-challenged, I guess) that looked a lot like the kneelers you'd find in a Catholic church, we dubbed the room the Cyber Chapel.

And if our Cyber had had a priestess like this Cyber had, I might still be there, staring at her with my face pressed up against the glass.

Although I'd wonder why she appears to have two different kinds of hair.

Courtesy of James Lileks' Institute of Official Cheer.

Iowa's Darwin Awards Nominee

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White Trash Wednesday

I don't think there's anything I can add to this story about an undignified way to die:

CORALVILLE, Iowa -- A man died in a mobile home fire Sunday night that apparently was related to fireworks being shot off inside, authorities said.

A body was found near the rear of the mobile home, Coralville Fire Chief David Stannard said. The identification of the victim was pending, he said.

The fire broke out about 7:15 p.m. and burned quickly, a neighbor said.

Shannon Kacena said a man inside the mobile home had been shooting off fireworks. He opened the door of the home periodically and threw fireworks outside, Kacena said.

One exploded under a car in front of the home, she said. She said she kept hearing fireworks and looked outside again and saw flames coming out of a window.

She called 911, but said the mobile home was engulfed within minutes.

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The Army has published a HOWTO on dealing with Arab culture. A lot of it is pretty elementary, but I learned quite a bit I didn't know before, e.g.:

Not eating everything on one's plate is considered a compliment. It is a sign of wealth when an Arab can afford to leave food behind.
and
Most Arabs DO NOT share the American concept of "personal space" in public situations, and in private meetings or conversations. It is considered OFFENSIVE TO STEP OR LEAN AWAY!
and
Shake Hands with right hand only and at the beginning and end of any visit. Shake hands longer but less firmly than in the West. Left hand grasps elbow...
Of course, evil Arabophobe that I am, I immediately thought "...so you can wipe your left hand on his robes."

But the one that really got my attention was this:

Ka'ba - located in Mecca, it is the most scared site in Islam. Muslims pray five times a day facing toward Ka'ba [emphasis added].
My first thought was that it was a typo for 'sacred.' My second thought was that maybe 'scared' was the right term after all. [H/T Secrecy News]

You've probably seen pictures of the recently-discovered hairy lobster by now:

Marine biologists have discovered a crustacean in the South Pacific that resembles a lobster or crab covered in what looks like silky fur.

Kiwa hirsuta is so distinct from other species that scientists have created a new taxonomic family for it.

. . .

K. hirsuta is blind; the researchers found it had only "the vestige of a membrane" in place of eyes, the Ifremer researcher said.

It's blind and it has hair on its palms.

Huh.

Damn, my mother was right!

Today's Lexicographical Public Service

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In case you haven't figured it out by now, the Bob & Tom song Cleveland Steamer by The Mad Armenians is a catalog of slang terms for perverse sexual practices. All of them are horribly misogynistic, many of them are illegal, and some of them are potentially fatal. The gang warns you not to look up any of the terms you don't already know, on the basis that you're better off without that knowledge.

Naturally, I will define them all here.

Forgot to put this up yesterday - Jack Bauer's weekly call to Bob & Tom.

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White Trash Wednesday

Today on WTW, it's fun with vacuum cleaners! Listen to this Bob & Tom caller from Monday tell a story about a gas tank, a car wash vacuum cleaner, and an impromptu rocket experiment (MP3) or read the transcript below.

Update: I've been told that this is most likely a BS story, since Mythbusters pretty much busted it in a 2005 episode.

BOB KEVOIAN: Do you have a vacuum cleaner story?

CALLER: Yes, I do.

BOB: What happened?

CALLER: I have a sister-in-law, who had a brother-in-law, who's now deceased, but it wasn't because of the vacuum cleaner.

BOB: Oh, thank Goodness.

CALLER: Yes. But he got some rocks in his gas tank, so he took his car to a car wash -

CHICK MCGEE: Oh, my God!

CALLER: - well, it was a self-serve car wash -

BOB: Uh-huh

CALLER: - and decides to vacuum out the rocks out of his gas tank.

(general laughter)

BOB: Yeah...

CALLER: So he's standing there, he starts hearing a funny kind of a roar, and all of a sudden he turns around and the vacuum cleaner tank goes like a rocket, just blows right off the cement thing that it was bolted to -

(general laughter)

CHICK: No way!

CALLER: Yeah. Well he hops in his car and drives off as fast as he can,

CHICK: Sure!

BOB: Well, yeah, like nothing happened!

KRISTI LEE: Who wouldn't?

CALLER: And then sits and watches while the fire department comes to put out this big roaring fire that happened at the car wash.

BOB and CHICK: Oh, my God!

KRISTI: But did he get the rocks out of his gas tank?

BOB: No.

CALLER: You know, I don't think so.

BOB: I'm sure that they were at the bottom of the tank, gotta be a long way to go to get to the rocks.

CHICK: Well, we know where the rocks were from - in his head! They spilled out and went into the gas tank!

CALLER: So we all had a whole lot of fun with that story.

BOB: I'll bet. Thanks very much.

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OK, So The Example Wasn't A Trifecta. Sue Me.

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I got an email today from a friend:

Subject: God's a dick

Christopher Reeve's wife died at age 44.
Kirby Pucket died at age 45.

I responded that he missed the third leg of a Cosmic Injustice Trifecta (e.g., "Stevie Ray Vaughan dies; Milli Vanilli wins a Grammy"), and filled in the blank for him:

Pimps complaining to a drumbeat won an Oscar.

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This is one of the reasons I really like Anthony Hopkins:

"I can't get caught up in the self-importance. People bow to your every wish and you forget where you come from and what you're doing," he told the magazine.

"I recently worked with two actors who wouldn't come out of their trailers for some reason.

"Can you figure that out? It's insanity. Or they complain because their trailers aren't big enough.

"Bulls***. It's a job, like any other, so don't make a big deal. Be polite, treat the crew with respect and don't think you're different."

Somebody needs to print that out and jam it down George Clooney's piehole:

"And finally, I would say that you know we are a little bit out of touch every now and then here in Hollywood - every once in a while - and I think that's probably a good thing. We're the ones to talk about AIDS when it was just being whispered. And we talked about civil rights when it wasn't really popular. You know we bring up subjects. We're the ones, you know, this Academy gave Hattie McDaniel an Oscar in 1939 when blacks were still sitting in the backs of theaters.

"I'm proud to be part of this Academy, proud to be part of this community and proud to be 'out of touch' . . .."

ABC News' Miguel Marquez takes Clooney to the woodshed as well.

Update: A NY Daily News editorial continues the beating:

Since Prof. Clooney brought up the subject, we note for the record the drought between McDaniel's supporting Oscar for playing Mammy in "Gone With the Wind" and Halle Berry's Best Actress award in 2001. Berry's win, along with Denzel Washington's Best Actor award the same year and a Best Actor given to Sidney Poitier in 1963, constitute all the top acting awards - three - that the Academy gave blacks over three-quarters of a century. And that was a period when Tinseltown mass-produced a mind-boggling wave of minstrels, mammies and other demeaning black characters, year after year.

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So I'm driving in to work today, and I'm on the highway behind this truck. He's got a magnetic sign on the tailgate that reads

Mr. So-and-So, The "Do It All" Handyman
You Buy The Materials
I Do The Work

How can he be the "Do It All" Handyman if I'm the one schlepping down to Big Orange to pick up all the stuff?

But What About The - SSSSHHHHHHHHH!

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Not quite two months ago, a court in LaGrange County (just up the road from the Fort) convicted Adel Al Yazidi on three counts of attempted murder over a shooting in March of 2004. The reason this is blogworthy is that no mention was made in the account of that conviction of the other interesting things found when Al Yazidi was arrested. They certainly caught my eye.

New Office Lexicon Entries

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Eighty-Eighty Split
When you're splitting your time 50-50 between two bosses, and each boss bases his 50% on the fact that there are approximately 160 hours in a week (q.v. Hundred-Hundred Split).
Grandboss
Your boss's boss.
Spiderphone
A speakerphone with one or more remote microphones wired to it. Used in large conference rooms; beware the fauxne pas.

White Trash Wednesday

(It's White Trash Wednesday in my head, anyway. I tend to get behind the calendar curve when I take a Monday off work)

Once again, I can get my WTW entry from a local story that broke this week:

A 35-year-old Fort Wayne man told a judge he had no excuse for setting another man on fire in June and apologized Monday in Allen Superior Court minutes before being sentenced to 30 years in prison.

. . .

A probable cause affidavit said Roland put a gas hose into the window of his car while at a service station June 29, pumping gasoline on Matthew Marlett, and then used a cigarette lighter to ignite the gasoline. Marlett was hospitalized with severe burns to his torso and arms.

A woman who was also in the car at the time was able to get out before being burned, court records show. Roland told police after his arrest that he hoped Marlett died and admitted setting him afire, court records show.
What was reported on TV but not in the newspaper was that Roland and his friends were arguing about whether Roland was too drunk to drive. Imagine that!

It's White Trash Wednesday! Take the whole tour:

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Apparently Jack Bauer has time in his busy schedule of saving the world, keeping out of jail, avoiding being sold out to the Chinese, and juggling one-season girlfriends to give Bob & Tom a call.

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