January 2007 Archives

Joe Biden announced today that he was entering the 2008 Presidential race. Today, he also stepped on his dong with track spikes:

Mr. Biden is equally skeptical—albeit in a slightly more backhanded way—about Mr. Obama. “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” he said.
This SHOULD mark the shortest campaign for President by a major party candidate that I can remember, but since he's a Democrat, he'll probably get away with it.

Ironically, given his prior originality-impairment problem, he is attempting to attribute the remark to someone else: to his mother:

My mother has an expression: 'Clean as a whistle and sharp as a tack.'

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A Presidential White Trash Moment

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White Trash Wednesday

Also on yesterday's Bob & Tom, "Bill Clinton" called in to discuss what he's doing with his time now that She Who Shall Not Be Named is on the campaign trail:

"BILL CLINTON": Oh, gollee, look, it's Tuesday, I gotta take the trash out. 'Cause that's when I rub shoulders with the neighborly ladies. Yeah, used to be years ago that was one of my code phrases with the Secret Service - when I said I was going to 'take the trash out,' it meant that I was going to take Paula Jones out!

It's White Trash Wednesday! Take the whole tour via the WTW blogroll on my sidebar.

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I'm Still Trying To Figure Out The Chicken Thing

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One of my New Year's resolutions is to become a better euchre player. I've been playing for several years, but I haven't progressed much past the 'average casual player' level. I've joined the Euchre Science group on Yahoo!, and I'm starting to read Natty Bumpo's euchre columns, but the site I'm getting the most out of - and the one that will be hitting the blogroll the next time I update it - is the very very nice Euchre Universe. If you're looking to up your game, it's worth reading from the beginning.

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Put Your Hands On Top Of Your Bed! I Mean Head!

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Yesterday in hour one of Bob & Tom, as they were coming out of the commercial for proflowers.com (who will be my next choice for Internet flower business, after my lovely experience with another company), the gang brought up 24 and mashed the two together:

CHICK MCGEE: ...and register to win a gift card from ProFlowers.

BOB KEVOIAN: Maybe they should do a Jack Bauer bouquet.

(ALL): The '24.'

TOM GRISWOLD: You give it to your girlfriend or wife and go 'Get down!'

BOB: 'On all fours!'

KRISTI LEE: Oh, wow, wait a minute...

BOB: Oh, sorry.

KRISTI: uh-uh, uh-uh(*)

(*) If you didn't listen to the audio, think of a dolphin trying to make this sound. It's code for "There will be no 'Kristi Lee Happy Action Back-Door Fun Time!'" if you know what I mean. And since you're reading this blog, I think you do.

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I had occasion to be down at the county jail not too long ago, where I snapped this little bit of irony with my camera-ish phone-type thingy:

Yes, that's a metermaid truck. Yes, that's the sidewalk.

'Rock-and-roll' can be used as a slang term to mean "firing your weapon on full auto;" however, "rock and roll with your AK-47" can now be taken literally:

The "AK-MP3 Jukebox" comes with 20GB storage capable to hold up to 9000 songs or 3000 hours of mp3 audio books.

AK-MP3 player built into the body of the ammunition magazine of Kalashnikov automatic rifle.
Player could be used on its own or it could be attached to the Kalashnikov machinegun instead of the ordinary magazine.
That last part could make the AK-MP3 a real hoot at the next muj ambush. Stick one of these in Haji's AK and watch the look on his face when he blasts out 'Rock The Casbah' instead of blasting the dirty kuffir!

Oh, yeah, there's chicks too:

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I'll Take 'Driving While Blind' For $1000 Please, Alex

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While I was on the road at lunch today, this lady pulled out in front of me without really looking, forcing a minor evasive maneuver on my part. As I passed her, I noticed her front license plate:

Jesus Christ is the answer
I'm a Jeopardy! fan, so naturally I thought of the question:
What do people scream at you when you drive?

Scott at Commblogging noted something that didn't hit my radar - PETA was willing to cut a deal with the devil. It seems that Yum! Foods wanted land to build a new Taco Bell, but the site in question was owned by PETA. During negotiations, PETA countered Yum!'s $1 million offer by offering to give the site to Yum! if Yum! forced KFC (another Yum! company) to adopt the advice of KFC's own Welfare Advisory Council on the humane handling of chickens. Yum! told PETA to stuff it (heh) - something about dealing with anti-corporate terrorists - and broke off negotiations.

Two things struck me about this:

  • I can't believe that PETA made the offer in the first place, offering up essentially a million dollars in exchange for what would only be a drop in the bucket in their struggle for animal equality against animal cruelty.
  • I have to think the only reason Yum! turned down the offer was that implementing the WAC recommendations (and isn't that a fitting acronym?) would have cost more than the $1M they were willing to pay for the property.

Scott thinks PETA's offer was counterproductive and damaged their credibility (if that's even possible anymore). I disagree. Now, I claim second place to no one in my loathing of PETA, but I have to admit that I think this was a genius move. If the deal had gone through, PETA would have been able to say "OK, sure, we may give you street theater 24/7, but we also gave up A MILLION DOLLARS just to get KFC to start treating their chickens more humanely before they kill them. We put our money where our shrink-wrapped naked people are." So it's just as well that Yum! told them to go pound tofu.

Which reminds me - I have to cut the animal abuse parts out of that nekkid PETA chick video and YouTube it. I'll have to redo the soundtrack, too - she insists on talking.

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Ironically, He Was Coming From Nurenburg

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Sorry, I lost the link to this story, but you can probably find it on Reuters somewhere:

BERLIN (Reuters) - A 46-year-old German motorist driving along a busy road suddenly veered to the left and ended up stuck on a railway track -- because his satellite navigation system told him to, police said Sunday.

The motorist was heading into the north German city of Bremen "when the friendly voice from his satnav told him to turn left," a spokesman said.
And here's the dead giveaway that the article was written by somebody who isn't him/herself German:
Several German motorists have crashed their cars in recent months, later telling police they were only obeying orders from their satnavs. [emphasis added]

Yesterday on Bob & Tom, they featured a story about a couple who got more than they bargained for during a home birth. What they said:

TOM GRISWOLD: ... this time around, Lynette and Dusty Johnson expected a large baby; they got three.

KRISTI LEE: Surprise! That doesn't happen in this day and age very often. [she's referring to the surprise, not the triplets themselves]

. . .

TOM: Well, apparently Dusty's johnson isn't that dusty!

What they should have said:

TOM: But once the babies are born, Dusty's johnson probably will get pretty dusty.

BOB: Unless he oils it himself.

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The committee in charge of the Bejing Olympics is really, really thin-skinned:

Beijing Games organizers have threatened legal action against online pranksters who poke fun at official Olympic symbols after a rash of digital spoofs appeared on the Internet.

An image of the 2008 Olympic emblem "Dancing Beijing" circulated on Chinese Web sites and chat-rooms this week -- the original symbol of a human figure in motion morphed into "male" and "female" symbols commonly seen on public toilet doors.

. . .

The Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2008 Olympic Games (BOCOG) said the practice was "tarnishing the Olympic spirit."

"It's a rights violation that contravenes our country's laws and regulations," an unnamed BOCOG legal affairs spokesman said in a statement on BOCOG's Web site.

"We hold the right to carry out legal action against such offenders," the statement said.

This from the country that refuses to do anything significant about the avalanche of pirated DVDs it inflicts on the rest of the world.

Comrade Kettle, it's Comrade Pot on line 2. He says you're black.

And This Is My Husband, Ms. Bijon

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A California man is suing because it's apparently a legalistic pain the ass for him to take his wife's surname:

Mike Buday isn't married to his last name. In fact, he and his fiancee decided before they wed that he would take hers. But Buday was stunned to learn that he couldn't simply become Mike Bijon when they married in 2005.

As in most other states, that would require some bureaucratic paperwork well beyond what a woman must go through to change her name when marrying.

. . .

"Diana and I feel strongly about gender equality for both men and women," Buday said. "I think the most important thing in all of this is to bring it to a new level of awareness."
It seems to me like the logical thing if s/he believes in gender equality would have been for each partner to keep his/her/its own surname. Why not? Here's why not:
[Buday's wife Diana] Bijon, 28, approached Buday about the idea when they were dating. She had no brothers but wanted to prolong the family name. Buday, a 29-year-old developer of interactive advertising, was estranged from his own father and was not attached to his own last name [emphasis added].
And those two sentences tell you everything you need to know about this patrophobic nancy boy. The problem isn't the law making it difficult for Buday to change his maiden name - it's that he didn't marry the right guy to begin with!

OK, I'm being overly cynical here. If the guy wants to change his name, it shouldn't be any big deal. But I'll bet he gets tired of explaining himself after a while.

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The idea '24/7/365' makes no sense. Why not '24/365' or '24/7/52?'

Life Imitates Spiderman

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Spidey sense is on its way! From Engadget via BoingBoing - Tactile display could convey signals on soldiers' backs:

. . . a new vibrating vest could give "body language" an entirely new meaning. Joining the air-conditioned and insulating renditions, this snazzy vest features a "tactile display" on the back, which is created by 16 small vibrating motors that are connected to an internal wireless control unit. The jacket "writes symbols and messages on its wearer's back," and while the actual writing resembles Braille more than text, it can supposedly be used to "send important commands to soldiers or firefighters, warning them of imminent danger when ordinary radios cannot be used."

So does my spidey-sense detect danger to my groin, or is my "tactile display" just happy to see me?

(Previously on Life Imitates Minority Report: workspace / sick sticks and pre-crime)

Remember how Tom Cruise's character got personal greetings and extreeeeeemely targeted ads whenever he walked into a store? Turns out that MINI USA likes that idea so much, they're rolling it out right now:

The idea is simple, first give MINI USA some irreverent information about yourself (nothing too personal). Then MINI USA then sends out a special keyfob (4-6 weeks after sign-up) that identifies you to each of the Motorboards you pass. When the boards detect that you are about the drive by, they deliver a personal message based on the information you originally gave.

Of course, I'm expecting a near-zero-day hack that will make the billboards say FAR more interesting things...

[From /. via Engadget]

I was thinking about the prediction that I (and a lot of other people) made - that the Glendale Bowl would be an aOSU blowout - and it made me think of some other predictions about which I was dead-lock-certain:

  • April 1980: "The Lions need to draft Charles White because Billy Sims hasn't shown that he can catch the ball."
  • May 1989: "Andre Ware was the perfect pick for the Lions' offense. He'll probably end up better than Barry Sanders when they're both done."
  • April of whatever year he was drafted: "Tony Mandarich will dominate in the NFL."
  • August 1997: "Michigan is doomed this season if Brian Griese is the best they can do at QB."
  • April 1991: "Desmond Howard will have an immediate impact as a Redskins receiver."
  • April 1993: "The Patriots are idiots - Rick Mirer is WAY better than Drew Bledsoe."
  • April 1998: "Ryan Leaf is so much better than Payton Manning that if the Colts don't pick him, they may as well pack up and move back to Baltimore." Full disclosure: Vijay actually said that, not me, but I wholeheartedly agreed. On the other hand, Leaf has led his team to as many conference championship game appearances as Manning has.

I wonder if Troy Smith's suckage in last night's Glendale Bowl was on purpose, designed to drop his draft stock just enough so the Lions won't take him.

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I recently had a pretty crappy experience with 1-800-FLOWERS.com. The details aren't really relevant; suffice to say that I'll never be ordering from them again. You'd think it would have occurred to somebody that they probably shouldn't keep me on their mailing list, but that's probably assuming too much intelligence on their part.

I finally got around to hitting the Unsubscribe link on one of their thrice-weekly emails (I know, I know, you're not supposed to do that since it just tells spammers that your email is a live one, but since I'd actually ordered from them it wasn't spam per se). The next page was another website, probably their email list manager (cheetahmail, maybe?), confirming that they'd removed me from their list and asking me to provide the reason why I was unsubscribing.

First, any data they get from this will be useless since the only choices are "I get too much email from 1-800-etc" and "I'm not interested in getting email from 1-800-whatever," and since it's a radio button with no "decline to answer" option, most people aren't going to care enough to do anything beyond hit Submit with whatever option was selected as default.

Second, after hitting Submit, you're forwarded to 1-800-dipshits' main page. Why would I want to go there if I'd just unsubscribed from their mailing list? I just expressed a desire to make them stop trying to sell me flowers; why would I want to go to their main page, the only purpose of which is to try to sell me flowers?

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That Kind Of Advertising We Don't Need

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One of the issues of driving a vehicle with your company's name on it, particularly if you're a small business or one-man operation, is that if you hose somebody over in traffic, the negative association may make them less likely to buy from you.

"Tom Hoot Siding, Windows, and (whatever)," I'm looking at you.

Yeah, there's a website. No, I'm not going to link to it.

In Other News, I Polished My Polish Sword...

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Why do we call it 'DEE-fense' when we're talking about a sport and 'de-FENSE' when we're talking about a country?

Art Imitates, Well, Art

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Supreme Irony Alert: A large scuplture intended to show how fragile the earth is instead showed how fragile it itself was:

A million-dollar stone sculpture, intended to remind future generations of the Earth's fragility, made its point a bit early - just three months after its unveiling, it collapsed.

The 175-ton "Spaceship Earth" lay in ruins at Kennesaw State University after mysteriously falling to pieces last week.

The engraved phrase "our fragile craft" was still visible amid the debris.

. . .

The Finnish-born sculptor, who goes by the name Eino, had called the work "Spaceship Earth" to honor environmentalist David Brower, a leader of the Sierra Club. It depicted a bronze figure of Brower standing atop the globe. The founders of California-based PowerBar had paid for the $1 million sculpture.

"How can stone collapse by itself?" Eino asked. "I'm devastated."

He said he used a resin made specially for stone, worked with an engineer and was assured that the globe would stay in one piece.

Eino, who lived in Georgia in the late 1990s and now lives outside Las Vegas, vowed to restore "Spaceship Earth" to its former glory, with structural modifications. Rebuilding will start as early as next month, he said.

"I want to rebuild it and build it stronger than ever," Eino said. "It has to be made safe."

Rebuild it, blah blah blah, make it better than it was, yada yada yada, and it'll end up costing SIX million in the end.

White Trash Christmas

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White Trash Wednesday

I meant to post this on the 20th, or even the 27th, or even even the 3d, but you know how busy things get around the holidays. Anyway, y'all go an' enjoy yerselfs some White Trash Christmas.

It's White Trash Wednesday! Take the whole tour via the WTW blogroll on my sidebar.

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It's A Win-Win!

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I admit I originally wanted fND to win the Sugar Bowl, because it would A) make Michigan's mu#*af()4kin' BEATDOWN of them look a bit better in retrospect, and B) take a little more wind out of the sails of the OMG UR CONF SUX SEC TEH ROXOR!!!!11!!1!!eleven! kids. However, once USC's dismantling of Michigan occurred, neither of those really mattered to me, so I was back to the default condition of wanting fND to lose every game.

And LSU did not disappoint. Geaux Tigers!

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Shhhhh! Don't Give Them Any Ideas!

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Wouldn't you think that commericals for hearing aids or hearing clinics would be louder than regular commercials?

It Ain't Deja Vu When There's Video Evidence

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I've already said everything that needs to be said about the Rose Bowl, and I'm not talking about the previous post.

Change the names and a few of the numbers from my post after the 2004 Rose Bowl and you've covered just about everything. For instance:

OK, now I'm a believer. USC is all that, and a six-pack, and a bag of chips. You know when your team tanks in a big game, and you think, "Well, they just didn't play like they could?" Generally, there's a reason for that, and it involves the other team. USC owned both sides of the line of scrimmage like nobody I've seen against Michigan since the '02 Citrus Bowl.
Of course, that last part should now read "the '04 Rose Bowl," but you get the idea. I was also pretty hard on then-freshman Leon Hall
. . . the one time poor little Leon Hall tried press coverage against Mike Williams, Williams dumped him on his ass.
because he eventually developed into an excellent corner. Too bad that A) he can only cover one guy at a time, B) nobody else in the secondary can cover anybody, and C) Leon's going to be playing on Sundays next year. If they don't land Ronald Johnson, teams rushing for less than 40 yards and passing for more than 300 may become a regular occurrence.

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In Case You Were Wondering...

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No. There are no highlights when Michigan loses.

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Prediction Time

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Michigan 20, USC 17.

Happy New Year.

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