Stupid People From My Hometown, Part I
Administrivia Item #1: I'll be transitioning to MoveableType over the next several days, so if things go temporarily weird, that's probably why.
Administrivia Item #2: I need to add something I forgot to mention yesterday: credit goes to one of my favorite comedians, Paul Gilmartin (co-host of Dinner And A Movie and frequent Bob & Tom guest) for the phrase "Undignified Ways To Die."
Moving right along...
I have a friend who was once arrested for DUI (his BAC at the time was .08, which is exactly the legal limit in Indiana, so there's something not quite right there, but that's only incidental to my story). First DUI offense, no priors of any kind. They essentially maxed him out for a first offense with no exacerbating circumstances--overnight in jail, six months suspended license, two years probation, mandatory Driver Re-education, stiff fine. He figures it ended up costing him over $4,000. The point I'm trying to make here is that the system, though somewhat heavy-handed, worked: he was genuinely remorseful about what happened, accepted full responsibility, and to this day won't drive after even just seeing a beer bottle.
Contrast that with the tale of this mental defective, who, I am ashamed to admit, lives in my hometown. Nine hours after being sentenced for his THIRD DUI (five years probation and 30 days in jail with work release; the county prosecutor said there wasn't enough room at the county jail to incarcerate him immediately after sentencing), Numbnuts wraps his car around a tree. Police find--surprise!--four empty beer cans in his car. Mr. Waste-Of-DNA is in critical condition at a Kalamazoo Hospital.
Some people you just can't reach.
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 9:02:16 PM ----- BODY:Undignified Ways To Die, #38: How Not To Behave In Your Final Moments
In the latest installment in our series, we examine a good way to ensure a nice warm Final Destination with lots of personal attention at the highest levels. From spankysplace (with a hat tip to His Imperial Majesty), here's Or I'll Sue You!. It's the story of a rather unpleasant lawyer working his last case, so to speak. A taste:
The patient, between howls of pain and moans of agony, had produced a paper from his briefcase and handed it to me. His shaky diaphoretic hand held a fist-full of these documents. Some of them fell from his grasp and flitted harmlessly to the floor. He strained against an agony I hope I never experience and repeated to me, "I’ll SUE You." I didn’t understand. He had come to us for help but the first words out of his mouth in triage were "You have to see me right now, or I’ll SUE you."Now go read the rest of it. I'll wait. -------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 10:36:07 PM ----- BODY:
A Quick Peek Down Under
According to this story from Fox Sports Australia, a professional soccer team is activing wooing gay fans:
CARLTON has launched a bid to lure more gay supporters. The Blues want to recruit gay men, lesbians, transgenders and bisexuals in a new membership drive. Art dealer Lauraine Diggins, the only woman on the new-look Blues board, is driving the push as part of a "new and expansive vision for the club". It is front-page news in this week's edition of gay newspaper, the Melbourne Star. The newspaper reports the club will contact many of the state's "queer" community groups in its search for new members. Diggins revealed one aspect of the plan was to attract a lesbian with a professional career and a passion for the Blues to join a new women's networking group.We have no information on whether the Blues will rename themselves the Pinks.
This News Interactive story describes a Melbourne couple being the first in Australia to be charged with sexual slavery:
The charges are the first of their kind laid under 1995 sexual servitude laws and carry a maximum of 25 years in jail. The arrests came after raids by Australian Federal Police in Melbourne and Sydney as part of Operation Tennessee, a joint operation with the Immigration Department. Federal police allege the women, aged 25 to 36, came to Australia legally after being lured to work in the sex industry. But instead they were forced into slavery under the guise of paying off debts, it is alleged. The women were allegedly kept locked up in "safe houses" when they were not working. Police claim they were only allowed out to work at Club 417, a legal brothel run by Ms Tang and Mr Davies in Brunswick St, Fitzroy.So, was sex slavery legal in Australia before 1995? And I think it's pretty odd that they called it Operation Tennessee. 'Regular' brothels (whatever that means) are legal, so why didn't they call it Operation Nevada? -------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 6:53:39 PM ----- BODY:
Stupid Lawyer Tricks
I've been bashing the French since long before it became popular, so I was all ready to label this story 'Stupid French Tricks.' However, the stupidity here appears not to be of French origin. After reading the story on This Is True, I did a little more digging around and found the original story in the Miami Herald.
"In what appears to be a bizarre case of mistaken identity, French and U.S. authorities were convinced that [Nona] Cason, 39, was Nadine Tretiakoff, a Frenchwoman charged with kidnapping her own two kids from ex-husband Pierre Fourcade."It seems that Ms. Tretiakoff absconded with her and Fourcade's two children in August of 1997. By some means still not fully known (i.e., those who do know aren't talking), Cason, who bears a resemblance to Tretiakoff, was fingered as the fugitive mom. She was arrested in May, and her two children, who coincidentally are each one year older than the missing children, were placed in foster care. Fourcade was notified and returned from France, where he positively identified Cason as his ex-wife and her children as their children. I was all ready to jump his shit for that, but it's been six years, and he's probably pretty desperate, so I'll cut him some slack there. No, the stupid behavior here is from lawyers for the international arm of the National Center For Missing And Exploited Children, which, if you think about it, is kind of an oxymoron (certainly appropriate, given the behavior I'm about to describe). This group, which assists Interpol with international kidnapping cases, had a picture of Tretiakoff and claimed that Cason bears a strong resemblance to her. They were unwilling to share this photo with the Herald. I find this very odd; typically, if you have a picture of a fugitive you seek, you'd be inclined to circulate that picture as widely as possible.
Stupid Lawyer Trick Of The Month Nominee #1: Kathleen Ruckman, supervising attorney for the NCMEC, "noted that Cason 'looked like a foreign person'" and that she "also heard that the kids weren't going to school and that the family had moved suddenly." Well, holy crap! Call in the friggin' Delta Force (incidentally, from the story, that's not too far off--they blocked off a whole street to trap her for arrest)!
Stupid Lawyer Trick Of The Month Nominee #2: After Cason's identity had been verified and DNA testing had proven that the two children were not Fourcade's, Tim Arcaro, Fourcade's lawyer, was still skeptical, saying "When you think about it -- the length people will go to disguise themselves with plastic surgery. . .".
And the winner for Stupid Lawyer Trick Of The Month: Ruckman, for this little beauty: "Tretiakoff could have been unfaithful during their marriage, resulting in the children having DNA that didn't match the husband." Um, even if that were true, THEY WOULDN'T BE FOURCADE'S CHILDREN AND HE WOULD HAVE NO CASE!
And lawyers wonder why most people loathe them.
UPDATE:Larry's Log scooped me (and This Is True) by almost a month on this. He has a similarly low opinion of Ms. Ruckman, but he missed the angle about the kids not being Fourcade's if the kids weren't Fourcade's. Still, it's good enough to get him blogrolled.
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 4:20:55 PM ----- BODY:Random Vacation Thoughts, Part IV
You get into kind of a rhythm when you rent a house at the beach (technically, across the street from the beach--the term is 'second row'). Wake up late, eat breakfast (early lunch, really), pack a cooler full of beer, hit the beach. When the cooler's empty, come back, eat lunch, reload the cooler, and return to the beach. When the cooler's empty again, you've pretty much had enough beach for the day, so you come back, rinse off in the shower underneath the house, then drip try in the breeze on the deck with more beer until dinner. After a seafood dinner that would have cost $40 per person back in Indiana, the serious drinking begins.
The amount of beer six determined adults can consume in this fashion is truly mind-boggling.
Of course, it's not just drinking beer. The surf on Oak Island was good enough for some decent bodyboarding; indeed, most days the hardest part was fighting your way out past the waves breaking right on the beach to get to the ones you want to ride. I claim no special skills here: mostly, I just jump out right in front of a wave and let it push me in to the beach. Occasionally, I hit one Just Right and actually get a good hard ride out of it. A couple of those in a row and I start thinking Dangerous Thoughts. F'rinstance: one time, I saw a benign-looking big wave, and I got cute and tried to ride across it instead of straight ahead. The ocean was having none of it. To punish me for my impudence, it rolled me, then flipped me, then, in a final indignity, cracked me in the head with my own board. I swallowed enough seawater to salt meals I'd crapped out three days ago, and I had an entire gravel pit in my swimsuit. And all I could think about was how fast I could get back out and catch another wave.
Random Vacation Thoughts, Part III
Whenever I travel, I like to pick up a copy of the local paper to get a feel for what kind of news the area residents are getting. Sometimes it's a daily, like the Lawton (OK) Constitution with its frequent attention to nearby Fort Sill. Other areas have a weekly paper, like my hometown Allegan (MI) County News. Anyway, it's easy to forget that even though I spent the last two weeks on a tourist trap island, only a few miles inland is rural North Carolina, where you get stories like this (courtesy of Oak Island/Southport's local paper, the State Port Pilot):
A resident of the 300 block of Liberty Road said she returned home from work Friday evening to find that her home had been entered. Officer C. Ledbetter said the woman reported a $100 radio, four cans of beer, and a roll of generic toilet paper were stolen. Police found no evidence.-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 5:34:30 PM ----- BODY:
--State Port Pilot, June 25, 2003, p. 7A
Random Vacation Thoughts, Part II
One day on vacation, I was sitting on the front porch of the house, which overlooks Beach Drive, and the oceanfront houses, and the ocean, when I heard a stereo coming down the road. A long time later, the car that was the transport system for said stereo came into view. The car was a Mazda Protege5 four-door hatchback; the driver was a sullen twentyish male with the requisite baseball cap, Oakley shades, and B-pillar lean (you know what I'm talking about: the driver's seat is reclined nearly all the way back and the driver's head is leaning against the door pillar so it looks like there isn't actually anyone in the driver's seat at all). The only thing I could think of as he went by: "Dude, it doesn't matter how loud your stereo is or how cool you think you are--you're still driving a station wagon!"
Hulk Shag!
Ya gotta love those Spainards. According to the London Sun, Spanish toymaker Play By Play created a 12-inch stuffed Hulk doll that's not only anatomically correct, but anatomically proportional as well! The story features this picture:
which of course made me think of this (probably fictional) exchange between the photographer and the little girl: "OK Leah, now look at the doll... no, I need you to look up at its head... no, the OTHER head..." [CLICK!] "Finally!"
Money quote:
"And last night [mother] Kim called for a ban on the saucy toy. She said: 'A hulk with a bulk like this just shouldn’t be allowed.'"-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 1:16:36 PM ----- BODY:
Random Vacation Thoughts, Part I
I'm back from vacation, tanned (more or less), rested (definitely), and ready to run. I'll be emptying out the notebook over the next few days as I transcribe what I thought about while on Oak Island (not this one, this one). So let's get started.
I never understood the fascination with 'Southern' culture, usually manifested by the Confederate flag. I've always considered it a code word for redneck racism, but I could never quite quantify why until now. I was at a souvenir shop on Oak Island when I saw a t-shirt that said 'celebrating a rebirth of southern culture' or some stupid shit like that. On the back was a map of the US with the 'usual suspect' states highlighted, as well as one that surprised me--Missouri. I lived in Missouri for two years, and I know that the only people who fly the Confederate flag there are the same kind of shit-for-brains rednecks that fly the Confederate flag in other Northern states. Then it hit me--what all those states have in common. Before the Civil War, they were slave states. Thus, my conclusion: "Southern 'culture'" = "slavery."
I welcome any rational attempt to explain exactly where I got it wrong (hint: if your response contains the word 'Yankee,' it probably fails the rationality test and you submit it at your own risk. Especially egregious responses will be vigorously fisked).
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 4:13:05 PM ----- BODY:Signs, Signs, Everywhere Are Signs
Last blog for a while; I'll be on vacation until July 8th.
I was running on the treadmill this morning, listening to 'Messiah' by The Farm (discography), when I happened to look down right when they got to
He loves fast cars,and saw that the calorimeter read 666.6 calories. Jeepers! -------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 5:35:58 PM ----- BODY:
He loves freaky women,
But most of all,
He loves Armageddon
The Amazing Race 4 At The Quarter-pole
OK, we're a quarter of the way through this season's TAR, so let's revisit my
predictions:
If Hamas Had Helicopters, They'd Be Calling It Sectional Chart To Murderville
I'm not a big fan of the so-called 'Roadmap to Peace.' LGF refers to it as 'Roadmap to Murderville', but I prefer to call it the 'Roadmap to Piece,' as in 'Roadmap to Ensuring That Every Jew In Israel Is Eventually Blown Into Tiny Pieces.' Anyway, they've taken another turn on the merry-go-round: Israel tries to take out a Hamas leader with a missile, Hamas responds by using a splodeydope to blow up a bunch of innocent people. Again. James Lileks is one of the best--and usually funniest--writers out there (every day!); incidentally, this one makes me think of a live-action Red Meat, kinda like this one. But I digress.
Lileks' Bleat today has this answer to the apologists that say 'they only use suicide bombings because they don't have helicopters:'
"They don't have helicopters, we're told, so they use suicide bombers. If they had helicopters, they would have strafed the bus and everyone waiting at the corner. Give them a nation where Hamas runs unchecked, and they'll have helicopters."And since I try never to miss an opportunity to pile on France, I'll include his next quote:
"They won't be Apaches. The bill of sale will be calculated in Euros and the manual written in French."
Update: Damn, I'm already a turn behind. The IDF just bagged Yasser Taha in a missile attack. Also, the IHT is reporting that the Israeli Army has declared "all-out war" against Hamas (Deustche Welle is reporting the same thing). About damn time.
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 4:50:23 PM ----- BODY:Jackass Syndrome Strikes Again
Unfortunately, the person who got struck wasn't the mental defective who was going "nearly 100 mph on a residential street". Some poor schlub whose only offense was to be making a left turn at the wrong time is now asking St. Peter "What car?"
"This is '2 Fast 2 Furious' right here in the Valley," police Detective Kathleen Burns said. Authorities are looking to find new ways to crack down on street racing. The sequel to "The Fast and the Furious" was expected to trigger an increase in dangerous high-speed driving.There's something missing from this story, though. Shahenian broadsided Iko's car when Iko "was turning left in his 1993 Toyota Camry". Since Iko was killed and his passenger was not, it's reasonable to assume that he got t-boned in his driver's door, which meant that Shahenian was approaching from Iko's left (the other possible broadside scenario has Iko turning left in front of the oncoming Shahenian, where Iko's passenger would have taken the brunt of the impact). If that's true, than either one or the other was also running a red light at the time. But the story doesn't tell us anything else about the traffic situation, other than "Shahenian claimed he was driving the speed limit, investigators said." Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. -------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 7:04:27 PM ----- BODY:
So Am I Getting My Flying Car Or Not?
Yes. Or maybe no.
KeepersWatch And Office Lexicon Finally Updated
Sure, it's only been about 9 months, about fifty more items, and an an entire list, but my Keepers Of Lists totally self-congratulatory vanity page is up to date! Not only that, The Office Lexicon is also updated! Yow!
'Twas A Dam Shame
On this date in 1976, the Teton River Dam in Idaho failed spectacularly, killing 11 people and causing an estimated $1 billion damage. Fortunately, the area's sense of humor remained intact: one victim said, "We weren't flooded; we were just over-irrigated."
And speaking of killing people and overrunning land, today marks the 36th anniversary of the start of the Six Day War. I wonder why LGF isn't mentioning this.
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 8:36:50 AM ----- BODY:Embrace The Weak, Punish The Strong
Over on Television Without Pity, I recently opined that another reason SlackerJosh may have pointed the NFLWives to the middle bus rather than letting them flounder on the late bus was that he wanted to keep a 'weaker' team up high, increasing the chance that a 'stronger' team would be eliminated. I've also seen seen this (twice in a row!) when I was in the studio audience for Jeopardy! in 1990. Making the comparison would have been seriously off-topic for the TWoP forum, and they're pretty strict about staying on-topic, but I can elaborate here (disclaimer: all details accurate as of August 1990, so if (f'rinstance) they've changed how many episodes they tape in a day, sorry).
In the third episode taped that day, the leader going into Final Jeopardy bet such that if A) he got the question right, B) the second place person bet it all, and C) the second place person got it right, they would tie for the win (the person in third place was not a factor). Lo and behold, that's exactly what happened. This is pretty rare; it generally only happens when two players are tied for first going into Final. Jeopardy! rules in such an event are to pay both contestants and bring them back for the next show as co-champions. That's how Sarah Cox, a schoolteacher from Bangor, Maine, won her first Jeopardy! game--on the coattails of someone who let her.
At the time, the dinner break was after the third show of the day. So as we're chowing down on the Soul Train set, I got into a conversation with a guy named Steve, and the topic came up. I said that I couldn't understand why Paul (I think his name was Paul) would let Sarah back into the game like he did. Steve replied that he thought it was a very Machievellian move, and his theory was that Paul thought he could handle Sarah in the next game and that way he'd only have to battle one unknown instead of two.
Did I mention that Steve's a lawyer?
Naturally, Steve got selected to play the next game. Going into Final Jeopardy, he was in exactly the same situation Paul was in the previous game (Steve leading, Sarah close, Paul not a factor). He bet exactly the same way. Final Jeopardy played out exactly the same way.
We'll never know just why Paul dragged Sarah along. But we know exactly why Steve did.
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 1:06:00 PM ----- BODY:Next Up: Roll On Over You by Thin Lizzy
LGF reader jenbr had a great Alan Sherman parody as a comment to this story about another pancake martyr wannabee.
Never Mind Circumnavigation - Can They Make It Out Of Dodger Stadium?
Handicapping The Amazing Race
I'm a big fan of The Amazing Race, so I'm anxiously awaiting tonight's start. I've gone over the mini-bios on CBS' site, and here's my pre-race jump to conclusions analysis:
How do you say 'Redundant' in Latin, anyway?
Last week's Washington Post Style Invitational (deadline midnight tonight) is looking for mottoes for government agencies. I sent in a few:
Onion Audition, Take 1
Unfortunate Mergers
Joe Brancatelli reports that
BWIA and LIAT, two struggling carriers based in the Caribbean, will merge next month . . ..If they name the new airline LIATBWIA, do you think people will confuse it with a Polish word for a female body part?
Hey! A Dick Cheney sighting! I was beginning to wonder whether dude would spend the rest of his term in an undisclosed location.
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 12:09:50 PM ----- BODY:Attention To Detail, Part XI
This is what I mean when I say that I've been living in Indiana for thirteen years but am by no means a Hoosier:
A portion of the state constitution displayed in a government building in Indiana isn't Indiana's after all. The preamble in the Elkhart County Administration Building is from Tennessee's state constitution, not Indiana's. It refers to Tennesseans' ``indefeasible right to worship almighty God according to the dictates of their own conscience.''
Which part of that story bothers me more is left as an exercise for the reader.
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 8:29:48 PM ----- BODY:Sometimes, we laugh because if we don't, we'll cry.
The Oklahoma City tornadoes hit four years ago today. What's not as well remembered is that the Lawton/Fort Sill area was the first hit. One of our field engineers had just finished a several-month nights-and-weekends garage project--literally the night before. Well, Mother Nature visited him with malice aforethought. He took out this ad in the Lawton Constitution a few weeks later.
Where, Oh Where, Have The WMDs Gone?
One of the recurring punching bags the dupes (if you want to be charitable) / commies (if you don't) over at lefdymedia.org keeps banging on is this: "How come we haven't found any WMD in Iraq yet? Huh? How come? Huh? Wasn't that our [sneeringly, accompanying eye-roll optional] 'justification?' Well, then it must have been about oil/imperialism/racism/Zionism/insert-pet-rock-of-choice-here after all! Hail Marx!" OK, I overdramatized it, but it's at least a semi-valid point (never mind that Iraq is a nation of non-trivial size, unlike, say, the People's Republic of Berkeley). They say we should have let Hans and his Keystone Kops stumble around for as long as it took to find them, if that was our real intent, which (according to them) it wasn't.
Fair enough, but consider this: we essentially own Iraq. We can go anywhere we want to (granted, in some cases it would be unwise to do this in less than company strength) and look in any basement, behind any dumpster, underneath any pile of weapons of regular destruction, inside any U-Stor-It we want to anywhere in the country without anyone really being able to call ahead and say "The Americans are coming! For the love of Allah, move the Anthrax! And the copies of the TotalFinaElf contracts!" With all that freedom of movement, we haven't found anything yet. Given that, what are the odds that UN weapons inspectors, with all the BS they had to put up with, would ever have found anything?
A Baghdad Bob Sighting!
I'm a big Red Wings fan, so I've had to endure several of my friends sending me this picture:
Fortunately, Bob's moved on. He was last sighted near the Pepsi Center in Denver, and even though it's just one game, might he be making travel plans for Dallas? The best part about the Cheating 'Dique collapse? Columns like this one.
A Few Random Thoughts On The War (and the one in Iraq, too)
Sometimes bias is subtle. Quoting this McPaper article:
"Dozens of flag-waving rallies for American troops in Iraq look like spontaneous, grass-roots gatherings. But many are orchestrated by conservative political groups, just as anti-war protests are led by peace groups and activists on the political left."Note that conservative rallies are 'orchestrated' while leftist rallies are 'led.'
"Mr El-Affendi's comments seem to indicate that the United States is somehow obligated to allow their enemy's state-run television network to continue broadcasting. I personally am not surprised by this; differing standards of expected conduct for the sides in this war is the order of the day for virtually all commentators outside the US and Britain (and indeed, as Mr El-Affendi's affiliation indicates, a non-trivial number of commentators in those countries as well). Instead of criticizing Saddam for parading clip after clip of Coalition POWs, he criticizes the US for attempting to prevent continued broadcasts of such a nature. The propaganda battle is an integral feature of modern warfare; there's no reason to let your enemy get his say if you can do something about it."Surprise, surprise--as it turns out, it can be argued that our attempts to silence Iraqi TV are a violation of the Geneva Conventions. Basically, the argument goes like this: Iraqi TV serves no military purpose; thus, it's a civilian target and not fair game. Personally, I think that's a load of crap - Article 72 indicates that we're on the hook to provide scientific equipment, musical instruments, and sports outfits to our Iraqi EPW's! Well, we do have them decked out for one game already--Blind Man's Bluff! -------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 1:55:24 PM ----- BODY:
Undignified Ways To Die, #37: What Would It Take To Get You To Go Into An Open-Pit Latrine?
Four guys in Kenya found out the hard way that Dangerous Things lurk in open-pit latrines. What, you ask, were they doing in there? Fishing for a woman's cell phone. She'd offered 1000 shillings to the person who retrieved the phone she accidentally dropped in the latrine. And how much is 1000 shillings worth? Almost two weeks' wages for half the population - thirteen dollars and ninety cents.
If I'm ever hard-up enough that I'd even consider diving into a latrine without protective gear for two weeks' wages, I think I'd just dive in headfirst and not bother trying to come back up.
... And Jerry Bruckheimer Immediately Offered A Six-Figure Option For Their Story
Several news outlets are reporting that a group blasted open the doors of a Paris-area prison with rocket fire to free alleged gangster Antonio Ferrara. Apparently this is becoming a trend - five days ago, suspected murder Joseph Menconi was sprung in a similar fashion from a Corsican prison. I'll ask the obvious question: it was a French prison--why did they think they needed weapons to get the guards to surrender?
Now Boarding On Platform 7 & 7 . . .
Have you ever missed a flight because you got on the wrong shuttle bus (I haven't, although I came close once)? Well, this poor Japanese guy accidentally got on a party bus instead of the airport bus and missed his flight from Edinburgh to London! Actually, it could have been much worse: I mean, it was a party bus, and he could have gotten on this bus.
Bootleg-CD Smugglers, Beware!
The Washington Post is reporting (last paragraph) that C. Stewaret Verdery Jr. has been named assistant secretary of homeland security for border and transportation security policy. His last job? Senior legislative counsel at Vivendi Universal Entertainment.
Random thought, inspired by Amish Tech Support: if none of my personalities is crazy, can I still use the insanity defense?
How About He Just Pimp-Slaps You And Agrees Not To Nuke Iraq?
Some peacenik chowderhead in New Zealand (motto: "Nuke-Free Since 1987!") offered to let President Bush crucify her in exchange for a promise not to attack Iraq. The catch (besides the fact that she can't crucify herself - no matter how hard she'd try, she wouldn't be able to get the last nail in)? Bush has to do the hammering personally. "I don't think he would have the courage to do it quite frankly, but that is the measure of a man," she told Radio New Zealand. I know they're a little, um, different down NZ way, but I didn't think the 'measure of a man' was whether he was willing to hammer nails into someone else's hands and feet.
There's another thread to this weirdo's rant, however. I can understand people who oppose what we're about to do to Iraq because they think our government is in the pocket of Big Business and doesn't care what has to happen to whom, so long as the fatcats get their oil. I think they're wrong in every important respect, but at least I can see where they're coming from. This space case actually ascribes malice to our impending actions: "Can he follow through with this aim of creating more chaos in the world if he had to do it just to one person himself? [Emphasis added]" That's right, we want to increase the pain and suffering in the world. We get off on it. Damn, the secret's out. I'll have to stop tortuing puppies now.
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 4:36:37 PM ----- BODY:Justice, German Style
3,045 counts of accessory to murder. Guilty verdict. FIFTEEN YEARS in prison (fourteen to go, counting time served). That works out to about 1 day, 16 hours per murder.
Update: looks like he's out in as little as nine more years.
If I ever get the urge to go postal, I'm going to Germany.
More Crap From The Left
The March 2003 Esquire (no link; why increase their Google score?) has a short interview with Nation communist--err, columnist Eric Alterman (nl;wihGs?), who just scraped together a book-length hack job (nl;wiiGs?) on Coulter and Limbaugh, among others. Among his nuggets of wisdom:
We Interrupt This All-Hands Meeting...
We had an all-hands meeting for all the BMS people in Fort Wayne yesterday where our section chief, branch leader, third-level-VP, whatever flew in from Massachusetts, or Texas, or wherever our division is headquartered this week, and briefed us on our 2002 financials and plans for 2003. There was a Q&A afterwards, and I'd just asked a question (no problem doing that, unlike this day) and the Boss was just starting to answer when flower_goddess paged me with the 'call home now' code. So there I was, standing with a wireless mike in my hand in front of about 500 people, while the Boss was going on with his three-minute answer to what should have been a ten-second question. What to do? I couldn't just walk away to call home--that would have been a definite Career-Limiting Move. So I had to sweat it out, waiting for either the Boss to finish his answer (so I could gracefully exit) or flower_goddess to page me with the "drop whatever the $%&# you're doing and call home right $%&#ing NOW!" code (at which point I would have walked, on the basis that work consequences pale in comparison to flower_goddess consequences).
Meanwhile, somebody's cell phone rang. The guy looked at it and left the meeting area (lucky bastard). Ten seconds later, somebody else's cell phone rang, and he left the meeting area. Suddenly, all I could think about was "Oh, shit, what building just got blown up?" Mercifully, about this time, the Boss finished his answer, or at least just stopped talking--I couldn't tell, as I was having difficulty focusing--so I nodded gratefully, handed the mike to one of the communications support guys (hi Jerry!), and left. In retrospect, that probably looked bad enough--"Oh sure, Carter gets his answer and bails". So I found a phone and called flower_goddess, expecting her first words to be "Turn on CNN!" Turns out the bookstore had called and said they couldn't find my textbook used and would new be OK?
Well, at least she didn't use the "call home right $%&#ing NOW!" code...
Using the Law Of Unintended Consequences to our advantage
This Washington Times article describes the uproar over House Minority Leader (and left-wing nut job) Rep. Nancy Pelosi's request to have an ID card issued by the Mexican government (the Matricula Consular card) accepted as valid ID for admission to the Phillip Burton Federal Building in San Francisco. The argument against this is that only illegal aliens would need to use an MC card to get into the building; legal aliens would be able to get some form of state ID. Pelosi's reasoning is that even illegal aliens would want to have access to the IRS office so they can get taxpayer ID numbers so they can be good citizens. Oops, I mean 'good illegal aliens.' Correct me if I'm wrong (the most unnecessary phrase ever to appear on the Internet), but isn't rule #1 of being an illegal alien "Don't alert the government to your presence?"
My take? Fine. Let 'em in using their Mexican ID. I'm sure there's an INS office in the Federal Building, and a phone call only takes a few seconds...
The other smack-worthy quote in the article comes from Pelosi spokeswoman Cindy Jimenez: "The intent of the effort is to allow these individuals to . . . be able to talk to their representative." News flash, lady: 'These individuals' aren't American citizens! 'Their representatives' are in MEXICO!
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 4:38:59 PM ----- BODY:Flo Screeches So High That My Dog Leaves The Room
Some thoughts on Wednesday's The Amazing Race, discussed at Television Without Pity:
To everyone who thinks Flo is watching herself now and thinking, "Oh my God, I'm such a screeching bitch," I disagree. I'm convinced that she was one of the bottom-quartile experimental subjects in this study. She shows the same lack of awareness of how little she's contributing to the team. Word to whoever said that if they win, she owes Zach her share plus every dollar she earns (dog calling? repelling mosquitos? what kind of job would she be good at?) for the next five years.
On the cell calls: I had just finished pontificating to flower_goddess about how there's no way the racers would be allowed to tell their families anything specific about their situation (since all we'd heard to that point was 'Love you,' 'Miss you,' and 'Dude, Where's My Credit Card Payment?') when Ian said "We're still in the race." flower_goddess was gracious enough to only laugh a little.
Did I hear Phil correctly when he said they had to assemble a Swiss Army Bike? I was thinking "What does it do, unfold into a submarine?" Then I thought, "Switzerland doesn't need any submarines." Then I took my medication.
Zach: benefit of the doubt on the 'pantleg caught in the chain' thing. But couldn't you have A) done it when the Swiss guy was inspecting your bike, and B) only unzipped the leg on the chain side? 20-20 hindsight, I know.
When Ian said something about how cotton underwear would have been impractical, I thought "Oh, jeebus. He's either wearing silk panties or going commando."
John Vito and Jill: couldn't you have peeked under the cheese chunks to figure out which ones you had to eat, rather than playing a twisted gourmet version of 'Battleship?'
When the first group was running (downhill) to get to the detour clue, did it look like there was almost a six-racer pileup (and indeed, it also looked like they were one rail fence away from a long long fall sans bungy)? Dangit - I've got to tape the ones I watch live so I can verify this kind of stuff later.
When Teri dumped her bike for no apparent reason, I thought "I bet Ian made her ride the bike he built, and it broke."
Finally, I was disappointed when K&G ran into the Singaporean TV guy and didn't do a Austin Powers-esque "Mooooooooole."
Why Do You Think They Call Them The Green Mountains?
From Slate's Today's Papers:
"Two of the Republicans' most loathed figures in the Senate--Sens. James Jeffords and Patrick Leahy--represent Vermont. Leahy was the Democratic Judiciary Chairman who has held up all of President Bush's judicial appointees, and Jeffords is the former Republican whose defection from the party a year and a half ago allowed Democrats to gain control of the Senate and Leahy to take his post. Now that Republicans are back in power, they are thirsting for revenge, and the NYT says Vermonters can expect a nuclear waste repository to show up in their state soon."
Now that's hardball.
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 9:38:14 AM ----- BODY:I Have Grown Timid In My Old Age
When I was growing up, I never had stage fright. Didn't even know what it was, really. I was the Stage Manager in my senior class production of Thornton Wilder's Our Town. If you're not familiar with the play, understand that the Stage Manager is not only a speaking part, it's probably the one with the most lines. Opening and closing monologues to each act, countless asides to the audience, that kind of thing. Perfect for a know-it-all smartass like me. It's also when I started dating flower_goddess, but that's a story for another time.
A couple of months later was our annual Band Follies, and I was everywhere. Wind Ensemble, Stage Band, jazz quintet (Tigerland Dixiecats, for you fellow Allegan High grads), skits, in-between-acts; seven or eight appearances in all and I would have done more if they'd let me. Even eight years later, on Jeopardy!, I never had any problem with what one of the contestant handlers referred to as "how you handle the lights, the cameras, and the pressure." As an aside, you know you've gotten over an unpleasant event in your life when you forget its anniversary. More on that tomorrow. Or maybe next week. But I digress.
So now our company has reorganized again (is it common practice to have your org chart on a whiteboard?), and the new Guy In Charge of our operations, who of course isn't based where we are, is making the Grand Tour to find out exactly what the people who work for him do. There's about 1100 of us here; half work for him and half work for some other high-ranking suit. I think. There's really no way to tell anymore. At any rate, he's speechifying us later this morning, and I was one of the people picked to actually attend his presentation (as opposed to watching it over closed-circuit, like most of the rest of us). I'm expected to ask a question, which of course will be broadcast over said CCTV, and I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to say and I'm scared to death about it. I know better than to ask the questions I really want to ask, Career Limiting Moves such as "What makes you think you'll work out any better than the guy you replaced?" or "Do the accountants whose terminal fsck-up caused our stock price to go from 70 to 18 in four months still work for the company?, but beyond that, I don't really have anything.
And that bothers me. I don't know why - relatively speaking, there isn't any more at stake today than there was that night I stood up in the L.E. White Junior High cafetorium and kicked things off by belting out "Tonight's play takes place in Grovers Corners, New Hampshire." If I'd munged up Our Town, it would have been a looooong time before I lived it down. It's like I'm afraid to take risks anymore, which wasn't a problem twenty years ago (although in at least one case, maybe I should have been afraid) or even twelve years ago. More on that tomorrow. Or maybe next week.
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 8:10:08 AM ----- BODY:ERROR S306: Verb-Object Generation Mismatch
It took me five minutes just to parse this sentence: "On Thursday, Dunn gave birth to her twin granddaughters, Kaitlyn and Shelby."
Yeah, but can it go around trees?
I want one of these to mow my lawn. Do the whole thing in six seconds and never worry about vermin again.
(The funny thing here is while I was googling on "Zeus land mine" after hearing about the system from a friend, the fourth-highest entry on the list, inexplicably, was this.
Word Of The Day
Everybody does this kind of thing every now and then, but did you realize there's a word for it? Schadenfreude. OK, so it was their Word Of The Day over two years ago, but it's mine today. That's me--squarely on the trailing edge.
Watch the skies
If you see one of these flying around your town, you'd best get MOPPed doublequick. Here's why.
In a totally unrelated story, the mouse in Mouse Hunt wouldn't have lasted ten seconds against these kittens (flash required).
And 103 words later, the duck said...
Well, I've discovered another Illuminati plot (that makes four, for those of you scoring at home. The other three are [DELETED], [DELETED], and [DELETED WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE]). CNN, well-known as an Illuminati mouthpiece, purports to have found the world's funniest joke. A harmless little chuckle, right? Well, maybe, but what it obscures is the fact that the real "World's Funniest Joke" is lethal at close range and is thus being held in reserve for when the Illuminati make their Big Move.
However, note that this official Monty Python web page attempts to muddy the waters by claiming it's just a bunch of gibberish faux-German.
Did anybody else recognize last night's Survivor immunity challenge as a Tower Of Hanoi for N=6? This site did.
Can't Possibly Be True, Part XXIII
I'm hoping this is a hoax, because it's just waaaaaaay too creepy otherwise: according to this article in Reason magazine, this is the new logo of the Office of Homeland Security:
One Year After
Remember the good old days, when 'white powdery substance' meant this rather than this?
Channelling today's Daily Illuminator
Nothing original today, just a couple of links from the Daily Illuminator, the blog of Steve Jackson Games. The first is an excellent poem about the WTC attack, written by a frequent SJG contributor; the second is far more sinister, and I promise you'll never look at beanie babies the same way again.
More MLRS Fun
I still can't find the other pictures I alluded to yesterday, but here's an email I got in May of 1998 about the time a couple of launchers on a Fort Sill firing range experienced what is technically referred to as "a small oops"...
> If you haven't heard by now, there was a small oops > registered at Fort Sill last week (11 - 15 May 98). About > Wed, a unit managed to misplace a few MLRS rockets[1]. Reports > say that 3 rockets got away. Two were found near Elgin, OK. > The third is still missing and presumed to be lost in a lake. > > Best information indicates that the unit was operating on the > East Range. There were three MLRS units on the range at the > time and all must have been loaded and firing because the > innocent units have not been identified and cleared yet. The > rockets were the Reduced Range Practice Rockets (RRPR pronounced > ripper). These rockets have a blunt nose causing the max range > to be approximately 15 Kilometers. It has a smoke charge in the > nose designed to produce a puff of smoke when it impacts so the > observer can spot the impact (if the wind isn't blowing, the > sun is in the right position in the sky, and the observer has been > a very, very, good boy, the round may be seen by human eyes). > > All of this is contrary to the initial reports. The rockets were > not loaded with HE[2] or even better, the DPICM[3] submunitions. > (Yes, the submunitions are HE shape charges but they are not a > large chunk of explosive packaged together as a single explosive.) > The incident did not occur on the West range with the rounds > impacting near Roger's Lane and 82d street[4]. > > This event could be caused by several different factors. If MET[5] > data was incorrect, it could cause the rounds to go some place > other than the expected impact area. If bad target location was > input the end location could be wrong. If the launcher did not > do a good calibration run or input the wrong location, the rounds > could go in the wrong place. Some one mentioned the launchers > were using new software. Unfamiliarity with the software could > have produced the incident. Fin failure is not likely if three > rounds went astray. Lose a fin and litteraly lose a rocket. > My unit in Germany is still looking for the rocket that lost a fin. [1] MLRS: Multiple Launch Rocket System. An artillery system comprising a launcher and 12 rockets with a range of about 35KM. [2] HE: High Explosive. One big bomb. [3] DPICM: Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional munitions. An MLRS rocket loaded with DPICM contains several hundred softball- sized bomblets designed to kill personnel in the open and destroy soft-skinned vehicles. The deployment pattern saturates an area larger than a football field. Verrrry nasty. [4] This area is a residential neighborhood. Live rounds impacting here would have been a bit more than "a small oops." [5] MET: Meterological data--wind speed, direction, temperature, etc. Kind of important when you're flinging a big chunk of metal a long distance through the air.
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 10:37:59 PM ----- BODY:The biggest vehicle has right-of-way
While looking for something else in the sea of papers I call a den, I found some pictures related to an incident I saw at Fort Sill when I was there in 1995. Here's what you need to know if you ever have to drive on post there. I'll have more later, when I find the pictures needed to properly accompany my "Warning - artillery may be fired over road in this area" story.
Credit Where Credit Is Due
I enjoy cracking on McPaper as much as the next guy, but I have to admit that they did an excellent job with their current three-day feature on the events of September 11 from an air traffic control perspective (which is something I'd always wondered about). [Part One | Part Two | {Part Three is tomorrow}]
The Multicolor was also the only major paper to report (according to Slate) that a Korean Air jumbo jet came aboutthisclose to getting its ass shot down on September 11.
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 11:50:57 AM ----- BODY:Unclear On The Concept, part II
I was in a local Home Improvement Center (*cough*theseguys*cough*) over the weekend, looking to buy some network cable so I can wire up my son's room. After I finally get the attention of two clerks, I tell them I need 100 feet of Cat 5e. As one clerk reaches for the bulk box on the floor to measure out 100 feet...
Me: [pointing to boxes marked "100' Category 5e Network Cable" on a shelf 10' or so up] "Actually, I'd rather just buy it prepackaged."
Clerk #1: "Okay."
Clerk #2: "I'll go get a ladder."
Clerk #1: "Don't need one." He rolls out a small platform on casters from under the shelf. On the platform is a BIG spool of some kind of wire. He climbs on top of the spool, stands on his tiptoes, and gets the box for me.
Clerk #1: "You never saw me do that." He leaves.
Clerk #2: "That guy's the head of our safety committee."
Hee-Haw!
Jackass.
They Have Laws Against This?
Sure, it's sleazy, but since when is fixing an Olympic event a crime? Sure, it's stupid, but since when is wearing an obscene t-shirt to your court date a crime? Sure, it's, well I don't know what it is exactly but I'm real real jealous, but since when is getting busy with your spouse in your own bed a crime? (Actually, the chowderhead with the t-shirt was jailed for contempt of court, which isn't the same thing.)
w3 0wn ur f0n3
eweek.com reports that security researchers (read: hackers) at @stake have discovered many serious security flaws in one of the most popular brands of voice-over-IP phones, Pingtel's xpressa SIP PX-1. Among the flaws: shipping the phones without an administrative password (then allowing the password to be set remotely!), transmitting login information in cleartext, and lack of support for HTTPS. Once you 0wn the phone, you can do things like drop calls, change speed-dial settings, divert calls to another SIP phone, and DOS the phone in a dozen different ways. But the fun has just begun--you're now the prowd 0wn3r of a "POSIX compliant network device with storage space, bandwidth and a CPU." Another minion to do your blackhat bidding!
I submitted this (edited for brevity) to Slashdot; they didn't think it was good enough. Fortunately, we at the Reserved Space aren't constrained by things like standards.
Vacation Is Good
We just got back from a week on the beach in North Carolina (here, for those of you scoring at home (satellite photo here)), and I was able to avoid any major sunburn. It's amazing what you can do with a 55-gallon drum of sunblock and a three-inch brush.
One of my favorite b-may (guest) rants is about proper respect for fire. 26 people in Lima, Peru are dead because these Einsteins didn't listen.
Our Dumb Workforce
All kinds of professions suffer from an occasional attack of the Stupids, be it accounting math, inexplicable personalized license plate denials, or big-time software bugs (and the /. discussion thereof), but burning a 'Dear Jane' letter from your estranged husband while on wildfire-patrol duty takes the cake.
People are property
The answer to yesterday's (rhetorical) question, of course, is that the shows aren't designed to help beautiful people hook up; they're designed to put beautiful people on TV so that lots of people will look at them. The show isn't the product; the viewers are the product. Ask Dallas Smythe.
What we really need is 'Dweebs Meet Dogs'
Why are there TV shows designed for the express purpose of helping beautiful people hook up? They don't need any help. I see crap like Elimidate or Dismissed and I just want to go Elvis on my TV.
And if you fold it this way, it spells 'Elvis Lives'
The conspiracy head cases have grabbed onto another 'sign': currency origami that explains, well, I don't know exactly, but it all has to do with September 11. Actually, the glennbeck.com page is a spoof on it; the original (serious?) link is here.
And to think that back when I was a kid, it was a really cool thing to fold a dollar bill so that George's head looked like a mushroom...
The Lie Revealed
#1 is true, although I later broke in again and left more than enough money to cover what I'd taken. In fact, the whole story is here. #3 is also true: it's "The Stupidest Thing I've Ever Done", which I originally wrote for Pyroto Mountain. So that leaves #2, which is actually almost true--I did see Moeller as he was walking out of U-M's Schembechler Hall (yes, that's what they really call it) for the last time, talking to a TV news crew.
Two Truths And A Lie
I saw this on b-may; it looks like he got it from Harrumph!. Here's mine:
Honor All Those Who Serve
I've made it a habit, whenever I find out that someone is a veteran, to say "Thank you for your service." I've found it to be a good way of expressing my gratitude without being overbearing. So now I'm thinking about all the other people who serve our country, and it goes beyond just vets, active duty military, and public safety workers. For example, here at the Day Job, we've got a couple of people on the ground in Afghanistan right now. Who are you thinking of today?
Commander Riker, staff the department with '133t h4X0rz'
One of the reasons my blogging dropped off (and when I say 'dropped off', I mean 'dropped to zero') a couple of months back is that I was too busy with class work (note that this is not to be confused with the blog gap last summer, which was due to my being in the Blogger Relocation Program). One of my assignments for that class was this:
You have just been hired as the head of a company's software development group. Your predecessor was fired because too many of the group's projects were behind schedule, over budget, or both. On your first day at this job, you realize that the group was not using any kind of formal development process. Write a 3-4 page paper comparing and contrasting these development methodologies: Synchronize and Stabilize, Extreme Programming, and the Rational Unified Process. Select the methodology that you would use, and explain your choice.I decided to write mine... differently. Here's the result. -------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 2:02:36 PM ----- BODY:
Hypocrites On Parade, Part II
I was listening to the Bob & Tom Show on the way into work this morning, and they were interviewing Vecepia. One of the things I've always wondered is why they voted out Hunter, Mara-morons' strongest member, so early. Evidently, he'd led the charge to vote Peter out first, based on Hunter's perception of Peter as a threat (and all this time I thought it was because Peter creeped everybody out). Vecepia then said, and I quote, "God don't like ugly," meaning (I guess) 'what goes around comes around,' so the tribe turned on Hunter and ran him at the next available opportunity.
God likes ugly just fine, V. If He didn't, you wouldn't have won.
One last thing, you good Christian woman, you--are you planning on tithing with that million?
One other last thing--my "Top Slogans That Insult A Rival University" is today's List Of The Day at Keepers.
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 12:23:05 PM ----- BODY:Hypocrites On Parade, Part I
I originally planned on running a big analysis of the Survivor finale last night, but it basically boils down to this: I am really really tired of people who do something they know is wrong, then figure it's OK since they asked God to forgive them. If you watch Survivor, you know what I'm referring to. If not, you don't care, so there's no point in me going on about it.
About Rosie O'Donnell hosting the reunion episode: I've added a new entry to the list of Things I Never Thought I'd Say--"Bring back Bryant Gumbel!"
Everyone knows love is blind...
But evidently it's also deaf and incapable of sensing vibration through its feet. This story describes how a New Jersey couple were seen embracing on a railroad track moments before they were hit by a train. Upon further review, it appears to have been a suicide pact (they both left their wallets on the station platform). OK, so now we know that love is blind, deaf, incapable of sensing vibration through its feet, and occasionally fatally stupid.
Update: the story as rewritten clearly describes a suicide pact (the early edition did not list a motive).
On The Internet, Everybody Will Be Famous For Fifteen Seconds. Sixty Times.
Last week, I had a story accepted by Slashdot. I got a fourth-order taste of the Slashdot effect from it, since the site was linked to my story credit.
Me, yesterday:
"Huh, this looks kinda cool, I'll play the first hole.
That was neat, I'll play another hole.
OK, just one more hole.
OK, just one more hole.
OK, just one more hole.
OK, just one more hole.
...
Eleven under par! Woo-hoo!"
Aw, Rats!
Sure, the mind control paranoiacs probably have a screw loose, but we're closer to it than you think.
Mayday! Mayday!
May Day! May Day! May Day!
Storming The Basilica
There's a story in yesterday's New York Times [free registration required, although I think using 'slashdot2000' for user name and password will work] that talks about the explosion in the number of sexual abuse lawsuits against the Catholic church. Seems it used to be that only 'marginal' lawyers and law firms (and by 'marginal' I think they mean 'marginally profitable') would take these cases. Now that the depth of the abuse is starting to come out, the attention of Larger Firms has been attracted (and by 'Larger' I mean 'larger profitability'). This concerns the attorney who is the primary figure in this story, one Jeffrey Anderson. Mr. Anderson has been on a Crusade (capital 'C' added) ever since he found out that his daughter "had been molested as a girl by a therapist who had formerly been a Catholic priest." I want to make it clear here that I feel for them, as nobody should ever have to go through what Anderson's daughter did, and if it turns out that the Catholic church is found to be institutionally responsible for covering things up they should be institutionally punished. But I'm wondering why Anderson has gone after the Catholic church--to the extent that he has sued the Church under racketeering laws--rather than the American Psychiatric Association. What responsibility did the Church have for the behavior of the therapist who molested Anderson's daughter, since he was no longer a priest?
But back to the smell of money. Apparently the rise in the number of cases worries Anderson:
"'I live in fear that someone will bring a case that should not be brought, like the Bernardin fiasco,' he said, referring to the abuse charges made against the late Cardinal Joseph L. Bernardin of Chicago and then recanted."
Well, that's good to see that he's concerned about destroying the reputation of an innocent man. Hmm, wait a second--let's check that article again and finish the quote:
"I worry about a public relations setback."
And lawyers wonder why a lot of people think a lot of them are scumbags.
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 1:43:53 PM ----- BODY:A Week Late And Three Votes Short
(This really should have been LAST Friday's entry. Oh, well.)
I'm a big Survivor Fan, and although there are lots of places where you can discuss it to death, there's a couple of things I'd like to throw out here.
John was a wannabe-Richard. He put together his Gang Of Four and thought he could ride them to the finals, but he forgot two things:
1. Everybody's seen Season 1, so they're on the lookout for overt alliances. Richard kept his secret until it was too late to stop him; John's alliance tipped their hand one vote too early, about which more later.
2. Right up to the end, Richard was seen as a nice guy by most of the others (despite how he was edited to look more like a chubby and occasionally-naked Snidely Whiplash). John never came off as anything but a scheming weasel, although this could also have been an editing trick.
About overplaying his hand: when the Immunity Challenge was revealed to be a knock-out-your-competitors contest like they seem to do once every season (BTW, anybody want to bet that the last IC will be "How long can you stand on one post with your hand on another?"), I thought it was rigged against Sean--the alliance would make damn sure he was the first one gone. As the challenge played out, though, and the alliance outed themselves by never targeting each other until everybody else was gone, the Clue Train finally arrived at Happy Naive-town Station and Sean was able to convice Kathy, Neleh, and Paschal that John's endgame plans didn't include them.
New feature: KeepersWatch
The monks over at Keepers of Lists have a lovely little site where you can vote on 'Top Ten'-style lists, add your own entries, and create your own lists. I contribute to it from time to time.
But Daddy, it's just a golf trophy! I swear!
What the hell was this golfer thinking? For that matter, what was the photographer thinking? Actually, I know what the photographer was thinking. Thanks much to badjocks.com for the tip.
Look out below!
This is not a good time to be a high school track athlete here in northern Indiana. On consecutive days last week, two area high school students suffered almost-inconceivable shot put accidents. At press time, one of the boys was still in critical condition and the other was in stable condition. Last Saturday, right here in Fort Wayne, a girl was hit with a discus, although she wasn't seriously injured.
Consider this: there were only fifteen accidents involving the throwing events (shot put, discus, javelin) in high schools from 1983 to 2000 in the entire country.
Welcome to the new site!
The blog will be here from now on, and I'll be migrating my other content here from Yahoo!GeoCities over the next several weeks. I'll try to get the most popular pages over here first, but who knows how long it'll take? Just bear that in mind if you click a link and end up nowhere, or back on my GeoCities site.
Out: Cement overshoes. In: Staged plane crashes
Today is the sixth anniversary of the plane crash that killed former Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and thirty-some others, and many suspicious questions remain unanswered. I forget where I originally got this version of the story. I don't think any of it played out like the conspiracy theorists say, but with Clinton you never know...
And speaking of conspiracies, did Web satirist Karl Mueller (pseudonym: Gus) predict September 11 by accident (read paragraph 6, then check the article date)?
...And Then We're Going To Shoot Dice For His Clothes
I'm a casual--verrrry casual--Catholic. That is to say, I believe most of the doctrine but rarely go to Mass. Anyway, this is the tail end of Lent; this year, I gave up pop (except diet) and alcohol. For practical purposes, this means no Mountain Dew and no beer. Lent ends at midnight tonight (Good Friday), which conflicts with my neighborhood's normal beer-and-cards Fridays. I'm tired of taking crap from my neighbors for the past month and a half about not drinking, so I'm going to observe the Good Friday abstinence- (no meat) and fast- (one small meal, nothing else but fruit juice or milk) rules in the Jewish fashion, beginning at sundown Thursday and ending at sundown tonight, at which time my wife will prepare for me a shake comprising equal parts beer, Mountain Dew, and steak.
I'm explaining this to my friend Pete, and when I get to the part about "I'm going to celebrate Good Friday in the Jewish fashion..." he jumps in with "What, you're going to nail a guy to a cross?"
For Sale: One soapbox, Slightly Used.
I really like Yahoo!Mail in general, but the one thing that bugs me the most about it is that you have to download stored messages one. at. a. time. I've got about 800 stored messages that I'd love to be able to save off to my computer, but based on all the hoops you have to jump through to download one message, I'm looking at about 20 hours to save it all. I don't think it'd take Yahoo 20 man-hours to add multi-download capability for everyone!
If you use Yahoo!Mail, and you feel as strongly about this as I do, go to this particular Yahoo!Mail help page, then click No to get a feedback form. Don't ask them "Why can't I download more than one message at a time?", because they'll just say "Sorry, you can't do that." Ask them "When will you add the feature that lets me download more than one message at a time?"
And if you're still torqued off about it, pass this on to all your Yahoo! friends.
In totally unrelated news: if you think that failing a class because you got caught cheating was bad, then be grateful you don't live here.
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 1:53:58 AM ----- BODY:I wonder what the woman who didn't make the team is thinking...
I forgot about the best 'new' event of all: in the Downhill Choke event, the gold goes to Caroline "Head Case" Lalive. In the team event, Sweden's men's hockey team.
--------
AUTHOR: Chris Carter
DATE: 8:09:50 PM
-----
BODY:
We Have The Technology - well, OK, just a piece of it...
Metal muscles - one step closer to the Six Million Dollar Man. Oops, two steps - I forgot about the bionic tool.
I've added an Iron Chef page to capture some episode summaries I wrote in the late-2000/early-2001 time frame (if you don't know what Iron Chef is, check out ironchef.com). I'll be adding more summaries as I convert them to HTML.
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 11:59:28 AM ----- BODY:We Don't Have Nearly Enough Olympic Events...
Allez Satire!
I'm great at starting new projects; finishing them, not so much. I am pleased to announce that I've finally finished something: inspired by a brief bit on ironchef-usa.com, my own (nearly) full-length Iron Chef parody: Battle Long Pig.
I've also updated the Office Lexicon.
Totally Coincidental. Really.
A friend of mine here at work celebrated his 35th anniversary with the company today. Today is also the day a different department here is laying off 40 people, and rumors were flying that my department would have some layoffs even though the two departments have nothing in common. Imagine the look on poor Max's face when his boss came up to him at lunchtime and said "We need to talk. Can we grab a conference room?". . .
. . . and led him into a room where the secretaries had set up a surprise anniversary party.
Oxymoron Of The Month
I got an email from CBS Sportsline yesterday advertising what they call The Game Before The Game, an annual competition between two players (one from each Super Bowl team) on an NFL video game. Apparently this has become a big deal--in each of the past six years, the team winning TGBTG has gone on to win the Super Bowl. All well and good, until I got to the line (emphasis added)
How To Destroy Every Insurance Company On Earth
You know the sound a bullet makes (in the movies) when it zips by someone's head? This would be that sound scaled up to cosmic dimensions. Yikes!
One of my ongoing projects is the Office Lexicon. I have linked a Red Meat that is a perfect illustration of the term goat picture.
And I'll add a postmortem on the EuroDragon game Real Soon Now.
How Not To Design A Web Page, Chapter 6
I'm hardly an HTML/Web Design expert, but if there's one part of your web page that should absolutely never be blinking, it's your contact information at the bottom of the page!
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 9:59:15 PM ----- BODY:Welcome PENTACON XVI gamers!
I will be GM'ing a mutated combined game of Iron Dragon and EuroRails during Sesson 1 on Friday morning. Details are available here.
My friend Mark came up with one of the more tasteless Halloween costumes I've heard of in a while - wear a racing suit with a number '3'... and a steering wheel through his head. Not to be outdone, I immediately suggested dressing up as an airline pilot with a box cutter sticking out of his neck.
There's an angle on the terrorist attacks that I don't think I've heard anywhere: if the terrorists' goal was to get the US to end its support for Israel, what they should have done is kept on doing what they were doing--attack American interests overseas. Eventually, we may have tired of being nickel-and-dimed over something most people see--or at least saw--as irrelevant (I mean, how many people knew who Osama bin Laden or the Taliban were before September 11?), and just rolled over and said 'The hell with it. Israel, you're on your own.' Instead, by taking the fight to our homeland, the terrorists have made exactly the same mistake the Japanese did in 1941. And we all know how that one ended.
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 4:39:55 PM ----- BODY:Using a jet engine to drive a cooler seems like destroying the village to save it...
...but there you are. I think I've found my new hero.
In a related story, I always wondered how the refrigerator on my folks' motor home could work without electricity. And now I know. howstuffworks.com just totally rocks.
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 10:51:17 PM ----- BODY:"Cliches Come To Life", Part I
1. Even during cybersex, men don't last as long as women. And nobody lasts as long as everybody else seems to think they do. And nobody really has a cybersex 'problem.' And I'll call you. Promise.
2. The Government would tax the air if they thought they could get away with it. And now it appears they can.
Ding! You've Got Eyeballs!
Well, now! I loaded the code, got mentioned on LangaList, and suddenly I've got more traffic today than in the previous month--total! [Full disclosure: I've been out of town or computer-impaired for most of the past two weeks; no new content, thus nothing worth seeing. Of course, it's possible that there's nothing worth seeing even with new content.] I feel like I just opened my front door, saw Gordon Elliott and a half-dozen gourmet chefs, and realized that all I have in my kitchen is three corn flakes, a ChapStick, and half a bag of dog food.
So what have I been doing for the past two weeks? Well, the Army has a test facility at Fort Hood, Texas, called the Central Technical Support Facility, whose job (actually one job of many) is to make sure all the Army's new computer systems play well together. We have a team down there full-time (join them...), but they were short-handed a couple of weeks ago and they needed somebody to help them support another group's test, so I volunteered to go down there from Fort Wayne. I should have taken TWA's loss of my luggage and driving through one bad-ass mofo of a thunderstorm between Austin and Ft. Hood as omens, but I'm pretty much paranormally-impaired. TMALSS, the other group never did get their poop in a group, and I went home two days early having accomplished virtually nothing.
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 10:16:40 PM ----- BODY: I'll be out of town on business until the 27th (and sans computer to boot), so I won't be updating the site during that time. I'm sure both of you will be disappointed. -------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 11:42:07 AM ----- BODY:So Long, Douglas. Save Me A Seat At Milliway's.
By now, you've no doubt heard of the untimely death of Douglas Adams last Friday of a heart attack. [ Slashdot | BBC | New York Times ] I wanted to headline this The Lights Went Out In His Eyes For Absolutely The Very Last Time Ever, but DNA's own website beat me to it. My second choice, Hopefully He's Just Spending A Year Dead For Tax Reasons? Saw three different posts in the Slashdot thread mentioning it. He lives on, after a fashion, with the BBC now managing The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.
My sense of humor was shaped by HHGG, Monty Python, Saturday Night Live, and M*A*S*H (in roughly equal parts). I first encountered HHGG when I was in high school, in the summer of 1981 on WMUK, Western Michigan University's NPR station. I think the first episode I heard was Episode 3 (the gang lands on Magrithea). Fortunately, my brother had taped the first two episodes so I could catch up. I was hooked. I taped all the subsequent episodes, then the first two again when the series was rebroadcast. I listened to the tapes many many times over the years until they were so worn as to be almost unlistenable. One of my all-time favorite Christmas presents was a copy of The Original Hitchhiker Radio Scripts, if for no other reason than it allowed me to decipher all the lines I couldn't properly hear from the tapes. Much later, I bootlegged a friend's copy of the show, available as a six-tape set from The Mind's Eye (whose web site I can't find right now). The interesting thing there is that each episode has about thirty seconds of material that wasn't on my version, which is strange when you consider that my NPR version didn't have commercials either and thus no reason to chop stuff out to make room.
One of the things that was supposed to come along Real Soon Now was a Hitchhiker's movie, and the reason it was taking so long was that Adams had creative control and wanted to make sure it was done properly. Now, I fear, the movie will get made anyway. I predict Marvin will be portrayed as a wisecracking ferret with a heart of gold (ahem) and voiced by Billy Crystal.
And to top it all off, we had to have our 15-year-old cat put to sleep yesterday. This is shaping up to be an absolutely superb week.
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 3:35:17 PM ----- BODY:And I Nominate All Versions Of N'Sync To Be On The First Flight Out
NASA chief Daniel Goldin says we'll send people to Mars within 20 years. Better make sure they bring tribute for the King, or who knows what horrors will befall them?
Imagine If He'd Tried To Organize A Ban On Beer...
I don't know which surprises me more: that this guy would dare to anger the coffee gods, or that he got the administration to buy into his scheme. Oh, wait. It was "performance art".
And speaking of the election, we have yet another report that Bush would have won the election if all the "boo-hoo, I messed up my ballot and double-voted" votes were counted for Gore. Once again, people: if you punch two different candidates in the same race in a punch card ballot, and you don't request a new ballot to replace the one you fscked up, too bad!
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 12:12:04 AM ----- BODY:
Can I Get A Mocha Latte... And This Magazine Sterilized?
I will never think of a browse-all-you-like-in-our-comfy-chairs megabookstore the same way again. Not after this. Thanks to Adam Kempa for the story.
Tinfoil Hats Are So Last Season...
Saw an interesting show on MSNBC yesterday. MSNBC Investigates: Back From The Dead featured near-death experiences and possible explanations, both scientific and spiritual. The part that got my attention was a segment on experiments conducted by psychologist Dr. Michael Persinger at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario. Apparently, the presence of certain electromagnetic fields near the brain can induce basically all the things normally associated with a near-death experience: floating, bright light, tunnel vision, childhood memories, deific/satanic visions, the whole bit. If a small college in Canada can come up with this, imagine what the uncounted resources of the Black Helicopter folks can accomplish. It's only a matter of time before the Orbital Mind Control Lasers become a reality. As usual, the conspiracy theorists are way ahead of me on this one, as they are certain the concept has long since been weaponized. Not to worry, though. The tinfoil hat crowd has you, um, covered. This year's de rigueur fashion in Personal Electromagnetic Protection is a modified water polo cap.
Quick take, from LangaList: Man, those MIT folks have taken the fight against dictionary password attacks to a whole new level.
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 12:10:12 AM ----- BODY:Web Serendipity In Action, or "From Travel News To The Wacky World Of Murder In Three Easy Steps"
Joe Brancatelli's Tactical Traveller column on biztravel.com this week lists a few websites commemorating defunct airlines (mainly, ones bought out by other airlines). I'm fascinated by air travel in general (don't ask), and by the history of air travel in particular, so I checked some of them out. The most interesting one I saw was a memorial to Pacific Southwest Airlines, and was pretty well done, right up to this cryptic comment on the last page: "The Webmaster honors the memory of the 42 victims of the crime committed aboard PSA flight 1771 on December 7, 1987." Naturally, my curiosity was piqued. After a brief Googlizing, I found this page explaining it all. Then I found this one, which takes a decidedly different look at it. All I can say is that I'm glad flight crews pass through security checkpoints now. Anyway, that trail eventually leads all the way back to The Wacky World Of Murder. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go take a shower.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
CNN reported this morning that John Glenn isn't too happy with Dennis Tito's vacation on the International Space Station (now, inexplicably, named 'Alpha'). Glenn told CNN it would be like the U.S. paying for most of an expensive lab on Earth, and another partner "placed a Greyhound station or hot dog stand on one end." OK, now it's my turn in the Metaphor Game: Taking a septugenarian senator and way-long-retired astronaut and Shuttling him would be like replacing Peyton Manning with Johnny Unitas. Oh, wait. Glenn already did that. Huh. My bad.
Or could it be that there were more pragmatic reasons for Glenn's flight? And one more thing--has anybody ever heard from the other people on board that Shuttle? Maybe the ten-day-mission was a cover-up, and the truth has been suppressed.
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 10:27:27 PM ----- BODY:Next, He'll Sue The Surgeon General For Allowing People To Smoke
On August 28, 1988, at an air show at (U.S.) Ramstein Air Base in Germany, two jets of the Italian Air Force aerobatic team (Frecce Tricolori) collided during their performance. One fell directly into the crowd of more than 200,000 people along Ramstein's flight line, killing 70 and injuring over 300 more. The 30 Apr 01 print edition of Marine Times is reporting that German attorney Gerhart Baum is representing 82 people who witnessed the crash. Claiming that his clients are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, he is suing the German government for unspecified damages. If he fails to win, Baum says he will move the case to the U.S. and sue the Department of Defense. Let me point out here that these were not people injured in the incident; these were people traumatized by seeing the incident!
Now let me get this straight--two Italian planes collided, and he's suing the Germans, with his Plan B as suing the Americans? That'd be like if you got food poisoning in a restaurant and sued the construction company that built the restaurant, with Plan B as suing the taxi driver that took you there!
In the same issue of Marine Times, a former naval chaplain has been accused of "inappropriate sexual conduct" with two [male] sailors. Commander Robert Milewski, who is known as 'Father Bob,' faces a court-martial for the allegations. No word yet if his partner, known as 'Father Neil,' has been accused.
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 2:09:29 PM ----- BODY:This Is What Happens When Your Voicemail System Runs On A See-N-Say
Spoiler: "To hear a duck quack, press 7." And it does! AFLAC is said to be considering legal action, contending that NDB is infringing on their Duck commercial. Of course, I'm the only one who's saying that.
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 8:46:51 PM ----- BODY:We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Blog...
...to work on some content. I've recently HTMLized Office Lexicon, a collection of (mainly technical) office jargon collected from email, co-workers, and my own sprained imagination.
I'll be doing this periodically (read: when I can't think of anything worth blogging), because I've got a lot of stuff to add. Whether any of it is any good will be an exercise for the reader. Most of it will go here, although some will find its way here. Stay tuned.
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 10:58:35 PM ----- BODY:The Winning Throw Went So Far That Some Neck In Barstow Reported Seeing A UFO
I've been playing disc golf on and off for about five years now, although in the past couple of years I've kind of turned away from it in favor of roller hockey, which I also play very poorly but with great enthusiasm. Anyway, I'm still subscribed to Rick Bay's excellent Disc Golf Online newsletter (subscribe here). The current issue's cover story is Big D In The Desert II, a long drive competition. Did you know that there are a handful of people on the planet that can chuck a golf disc (like a frisbee, but heavier, 'thinner,' and smaller in diameter) over 700 feet? I've actually met one of them (Scott Stokely), although he wasn't throwing that day. It boggles my mind to know that these guys can throw three times as far as I can. Germany's Christian Voigt set a new world's record with a throw of 217.05 meters (about 711 feet).
Now this is my idea of a "wrongful serving" settlement: biztravel.com's Joe Brancatelli reports in his April 26 column that a vegetarian passenger sued Indian airline Jet Airways after finding a chicken bone in what, he was assured, was a vegetarian meal. After a two-year court battle, the passenger successfully proved he had "suffered intense mental anguish," and was awarded... $215. Contrast that with this case, where the vege-frickin-tarian plaintiffs sought (unsuccessfully) $2100 from Taco Bell to pay for a trip to India for "purification" after inadvertently being served meat. Putting aside for a moment how a religion can have the concept of having to atone for an accidental sin, the moral here seems to be this: if you're a herbivore, being served meat by accident is considered to be worth somewhere between $215 and $2100 in damages.
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 4:10:53 PM ----- BODY:Sub Captain Formally Apologizes, Commits Ritual Suicide; Hailed In Japan As Hero
Commander Scott Waddle, captain of the USS Greeneville, arrived in Uwajima, Japan, today and formally apologized to the family of Toshimichi Furuya, one of nine people killed when the Greeneville rammed and sank the Ehime Maru on February 9. After Waddle made a few brief remarks, Shizuko Kimura, sister of Furuya, presented Waddle and executive officer Lieutenant Commander Gerald Pfeifer with a matched set of traditional Japanese swords. Then, in a gruesome but poignant ceremony, Waddle knelt before a Shinto shrine in the family's living room and commited seppuku with the wakizashi while Pfeifer stood second with the katana, prepared to decapitate Waddle if he risked dishonoring himself by crying out. After mopping up the copious amount of blood and spilled entrails, Kimura said that Waddle has "atoned for the great shame of murdering my brother" and brought honor to his family and crew. A high-level Pentagon spokesman says that President Bush is "satisfied" with the outcome and considers the matter closed.
OK, I made that all up, but I'm surprised The Onion hasn't come up with something like it yet. Except better, since they're way way funnier than I am.
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 12:00:10 PM ----- BODY:If You See Any Suspicious-Looking Unattended Bovines, Call Your Local Bomb Squad And The BATF
Normally, when I hear "exploding cows", I think "flatulence" (kosher version). Or maybe "nuclear-powered air compressors". But check out this description of how a human contracted foot-and-mouth disease. The guy's faring far better than I would be, given the circumstances--I'm sure I'd have started puking and not stopped until I died of dehydration.
I forgot to mention that yesterday was a comparatively slow day for man-made disasters; the most notable was the L'Ambiance tragedy, where a partially-completed apartment complex collapsed in 1987, killing 28 construction workers in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Sorry--that's 28 union construction workers killed. On the other hand, I think I may leave the chronicling of disasters to the professionals.
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 8:08:31 PM ----- BODY:If This Is The "Pearl Harbor of the Culture War," Then I Wanna Fly A Zero!
My friend Paul rants:
[But for this article,] I might never have known that games like Atari Combat, Wizardry, and Dungeons and Dragons that I played as a kid had changed me into the mentally unbalanced serial killer that I am today.-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 7:48:25 PM ----- BODY:
Of Course, Coming Off A 1-10 Season, Losing The TV Deal Isn't Much Of A Revenue Hit
Division I-AA Prairie View A&M has the dubious distinction of having one of the longest losing streaks in NCAA football history: 80 games from 1989 to 1998. They finally got the monkey off their back--although by that point, the monkey was probably a gorilla--by beating Langston (just a guy named Langston, not the whole team) in 1998. Now we find out it was all tainted: the NCAA placed PVA&M on one year's probation for bad timing. The probation includes no TV or postseason appearances, but no loss of scholarships.
I can't decide whether this constitutes regulatory overkill (kicking a team when it's down) or the most incompetent coaching staff ever (they cheated and still couldn't win more than one game). On the other hand, this isn't the first time the school's run afoul of the powers that be (maybe they ought to suit up the band--at least they have some fight!).
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 7:45:44 PM ----- BODY:Now At amazon.com: Jihad For Dummies
Looking for just the right book to complete your Jihad Studies degree (with a minor in Destroying The Infidels)? The Smoking Gun has what you need: "Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants". It shows the typical 42-gazillion ways to kill someone, using everything from crap to castor beans. And if you're running into trouble getting the information you need from your captives, have no fear! Tried and true methods in the physical torture section will get you the President's travel schedule faster than you can say "Allah u-akhbar!" The textbook is a little weak as far as psychological torture goes (I mean, "Using harsh treatment, insults, and curses to defeat his morale?" C'mon! I get worse than that at the office on a daily basis!), but who ever accused the mujahadeen of being subtle?
Thanks to Cruel Site Of The Day.
It'll All Be Good As Long As I Don't Hear Suicide Solution
I was on the treadmill this morning when CNN aired their story on the fires in Florida. At the exact moment when the newsreader said "..and one home and is believed to be the work of an arsonist" (quote approximate; I was too busy trying to suck oxygen into my dying body to hear it properly), Burning Down The House started playing on my walkman (not built by Sony, so no trademark or capitalization and go blow if you don't like it).
This happens to me every now and then. For instance, I read Cryptonomicon last summer, and for three days in a row I read something in the book very close to something that happened in real life later that day. The one that I remember most is the scene where the Japanese soldiers wash ashore on the island, and one of the soldiers is bitten by a sea snake and dies in a matter of seconds. That night's Survivor showed Richard playing with a sea snake. Eesh!
The Definition Of 'Disaster' Is Culturally Relative
On the basis of Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Exxon Valdez, I came to the conclusion that April is historically a bad month for man-made disasters. I need to modify that somewhat--it appears that if you look deeply enough into history, it's always a bad month for disasters. I didn't have to look too far today, though. On this day...
Let McVeigh Die, But Save The Cows!
In a particularly egregious case of sticking their noses where they don't belong, PETA sent a letter to Harley Lappin, warden of the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute where Timothy McVeigh is scheduled to get The Needle next month, asking that McVeigh's last meal be vegetarian. I'm pretty sure their request was rejected on Constitutional grounds. Failing that, PETA appealed to McVeigh personally to request a vegetarian meal. His response is far more charitable than mine would have been, were I in his shoes: "I'm kind of preoccupied right now, what with my impending death and all, but look at it like this: I offed over 160 people. What makes you think I give a flying fsck about animals?". Then I'd order a panda steak (seasoned with powdered bear's gallbladder) with extra dolphin sauce and a bowl of spotted owl's nest soup. Thanks to pure (watermelon) sugar for the ref.
I have always said that vegetarianism (or whatever the PC term is today; I don't keep up because I don't care) is a religion based on guilt, and that it's the closest thing to animal worship extant in the First World.
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 11:05:53 PM ----- BODY:At The Tone, The Time Will Be... 5:00. Except In Indiana, Where It Will Be 1927.
One of the (countless) things that embarrasses me about living in Indiana is the fact that we can't get the hang of this daylight savings time thing. Y'see (for those of you who live in the 47 other states that understand 'spring ahead fall back' as something other than a line dance step), most of Indiana observes Eastern Standard Time year-round. The practical effect is that in the spring and summer, we observe the same time as Chicago; in the fall and winter, the same time as Detroit.
What this also means is that the rest of the country is never exactly sure what time it is here. At best, it's tedious, like whenever I make plans to visit my family in Michigan or vice versa and have to remind them whether we're on the same time or an hour behind; at worst, it can cost Big Money. It would be comical if it didn't reinforce the stereotypical image of Hoosiers as backwards-assed country fscks, but it happens the same way every year--a big push goes on at the beginning of the legislative season, where this by God is the year we're going to finally do it, and then the next thing you know, the Indiana Farm Bureau bitches about how the farmers can't cope with it, and the initiative vanishes without a trace.
Of course, there are folks who think the entire DST thing is a crock and we should all go back to 'normal' time anyway. In a twist, some think that God set the clocks and we should leave well enough alone [these people think of evolution as a Communist Satanic plot, so don't even get me started here].
Wow, that's a lot of venting over something so trivial as what time zone we're in. I wonder what'll happen when I decide to comment on something meaningful?
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 9:42:24 PM ----- BODY:When The Call Comes To Ascend, Will You Answer Your Chakraphone?
The Spiritual School of Ascension is a typical bunch of New Age nut jobs, with a twist (at least from my perspective): I am 99 44/100% certain that "Oa" (nee "Rama" nee "Tom Weber") was a co-worker of mine here at the Imperialist Capitalist Running Pig-Dog Military-Industrial Complex from about 1992 through 1997. During that time, he was one of the most stable and rational people I've known. I wonder what happened. There is much speculation among the people who work there who knew him that "Mila" must have seductive powers from... Elsewhere...
I nominated the SSA to Temple ov thee Lemur as a potential Cult ov thee Week.
"I'm sorry for the way things are in China . . .."
I can honestly say I never thought I'd headline a post with a John Denver lyric. Ever since his unfortunate demise, I can't listen to one of his songs without mutating the lyrics: "Grandma's feather bed" becomes "Pacific ocean bed", "Rocky Mountain High" becomes "Gas tank runnin' dry", that kind of thing. For the right price, you can hear his voice from beyond, if that's what you're into. But I digress.
The point behind today's headline is that we didn't get the apology right in the EP-3 hijacking. Here's the apology I would have written:
Dear Comrades, We're sorry your pilot was such an idiot. We're sorry that we let him hide his little fighter under our great big aircraft. We're sorry he squished himself like a bug trying to force our aircraft down on Hainan. We're sorry you didn't let us help you find him. We're sorry that nobody else in the world recognizes your claim to territoriality over the entire South China Sea. We're sorry you can't control your electronic emissions sufficiently to prevent an aircraft in international airspace from picking them up. And finally, we apologize in advance for the damage we're about to do to your runway to make it unnecessary for you to dispose of the aircraft. Sincerely, Dubya.-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 8:27:36 AM ----- BODY:
Mrs. Wang, The Peoples' Liberation Army Air Force Regrets To Inform You That Your Husband Is Missing Because He Was Stupid
...specifically, because he played Chicken with an aircraft several times the size of his own. It's bad enough that the Chinese fighters were trying to steal the EP-3 by herding it into Chinese airspace, but then to claim that the EP-3 caused the accident and the U.S. is therefore to blame? C'mon--if you want the technology onboard that aircraft (and you do, Comrade, you do), get it the same way everybody else does--buy it from a turncoat in the U.S. Government! By the way, did you know that China claims ALL the South China Sea outside the 12-mile limit of bordering countries as its territorial waters? Check a map, and you'll see just how absurd that claim is.
Klingon Rules Of Succession In Action: On this date two years ago, the president of Niger was assassinated by members of his own guard. Taking power was a junta led by... wait for it... the commander of the presidential guards!
Disaster Month continues here in the Reserved Space: on this date in 1963, USS Thresher sank in the Atlantic off Boston, killing all 129 crewmembers. In 1991, an Italian ferry in the Mediterranean Sea collided with a tanker and sank, killing 151. -------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 10:41:25 AM ----- BODY:
All Your Marketing Scheme Are Belong To Us!
The All Your Base meme grabbed me as hard as anybody, and I was worried that some lame-ass ad-man would hijack it into this year's "Whazzup!" Have no fear! All Your Brand is looking out for us. And speaking of which, what happens when you mix rating sites like hotornot.com or bangable.com with AYB? See for yourself! This one is my favorite.
Today in history: General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederate army to General U.S. Grant on this date in 1865. I'd always considered Lee a traitor for going over to the Rebels during the War Against Southern Secession, but his words in the days that followed were largely responsible for both sides reconciling and not becoming, say, the Balkans (Yeah, I read that in Parade. So sue me). Of course, not everyone is happy with this.
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 1:45:08 PM ----- BODY:Hey, Little Girl, Want A Piece Of Candy?
Cincinnati (and I can never remember how many 'n's, how many 't's, and where they go) is learning what happens when you teach economics and sex ed on the same day. I remember my fifth- and sixth-grade days, desparately trying--and failing--to 'get a girl' (not that I'd have had the slightest idea what to do afterwards). Why didn't I think of bribery?
Evidently "keeping up with the Joneses" is not a uniquely WASP-American concept. Thanks to FriezLog for the ref.
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 12:51:09 PM ----- BODY:It Was President Clinton, On The Mountain, With The Airplane...
Or was it the Green Berets, on the airplane, with the pistol? Or was it Chinese Intelligence, at 35,000 feet, with a thermite bomb? Step right up and offer your theory in this high-stakes game of Clue, with former Commerce Secretary Ron Brown playing the role of Mr. Boddy. Five years ago yesterday, the VIP aircraft carrying Brown and 34 others crashed into a mountainside near Dubrovnik, Croatia, and all 35 ended up dead. Note that I didn't say the crash killed them all; that's because there's some dispute over exactly what transpired, and why. I have one version on my own web site; there's another that goes several steps beyond those claims, and yet another that blames the Chinese!
2001.04.02 Dammit, Swabbie, I Said TanquerAY On The Rocks!
Historically speaking, this has been a big week for environmental disasters. First, Three Mile Island, now the 12th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. How much have we learned in the intervening twelve years? Apparently not a whole lot, if you believe the Environmental News Network. But check out the last paragraph, where a London tanker broker says "I'm sure Exxon is aware that there are arguments both for and against double hulls, but you would have thought they'd pay a few thousand dollars per day more just to look good [emphasis mine]. That's what double hulls are all about." Style over substance among the environmentalistas? Marx forbid!
Remark Of The Day, courtesy of P.J. O'Rourke, on forbes.com's FYI: "Prepubescent girls are in command of such large amounts of discretionary spending that the introduction of a popular new boy band can cause the Fed to raise rates in an attempt to curb demand-side inflation."
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 9:01:04 PM ----- BODY:2001.04.01 When You're Sufficiently Illuminated, Every Headline Is An April Fools Joke
I just watched last Thursday's ER; ah, the wonders of videotape. In the first minute of the show, Dr. Kovac is called in to help subdue a struggling patient whose face is covered with a pillowcase on account of 'severe burns.' Kovac swiftly syringes up 10cc of Haldol and lets the patient have it right in the thigh, whereupon the pillowcase is removed to reveal a stunned Dr. Mallucci, who says the whole thing was supposed to be an April Fools joke. My immediate reaction--and this is surely a sign that I've been reading too much conspiracy stuff--was that it was a double-cross, Kovac was in on it, and Mallucci was the actual target. I think I ought to go take my Haldol now.
2001.03.31 This Just In... B'rer Rabbit Thrown Into Briar Patch
I've found my next nominee for certifiedstupid.com: Carroll County (NH) Superior Court Judge James O'Neill sentenced cracker Coolio (and there's two words I never thought I'd use together) to program the jail's computers as part of his sentence. I can see the headlines now: "Child Molester Gets Work-Release As School Janitor In Wacky Computer Mixup", or maybe "Manson Sentence Commuted To Time Served". Here's another story on the incident.
Aaron Anderer's Mountain Dew Tribute Page is but one of many dedicated to the drink I gave up for Lent (and anyone who knows me realizes how hard that is--far harder, for instance, than giving up beer, which I did last year). What makes it for me is the hypnotic background image. It's much better than Cats. I'm going to go back again and again and again...
One of the things I like best about web surfing is its serendipity. For instance, while I was searching for an answer to an entirely different question, I stumbled across the story behind one of the most popular urban legends: the rocket car. At least, it's plausible that it's the real story. Read it and make up your own mind.
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 8:56:14 PM ----- BODY:2001.03.30 Ding, Dong! The Witch Is Dead!
I'm a big fan of Survivor,although I don't spend nearly as much time discussing it as I did the first series. And this morning, I've got to tell you, the sky looks a little bluer, the sun a little brighter, and the birds a little cheerier because JERRI GOT RUN! Per usual, Burnett et. al did their little editing thing, leading us to believe that Elizabeth (The Colleen Of The Outback) would be exiting sans torch this week--certainly it was the obvious play in the Ogakor-rolls-up-Kucha strategy, given that Nick earned immunity--even going to some length to show Keith and Colby discuss ousting Jerri, and then deciding not to. Then the vote announcements:
"Elizabeth." (Sigh. It was nice knowing you, Liz.)
"Jerri." (Yeah yeah yeah, just get on with it.)
"Elizabeth." (Snif.)
"Jerri." (Big surprise.)
"Jerri." (OK, they're just wanting to add a little drama to it, fine.)
"Jerri." (Wait a minute--that's four votes! SOMEBODY TURNED!)
Then a short pause for effect, during which I realized that it was already over; worst case was a 4-4 tie, which Jerri loses by having votes against her previously. Then Outback Jeff dropped the hammer:
"Jerri." And cue the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
That being said, was doing Jerri the smart move for Colby, Keith, and Tina? Hell, no, for two reasons:
2001.03.29 I'm A Genius! And I Insist On Making Sure Everybody Else Knows It!
This one came to my attention courtesy of Steve Jackson Games' Daily Illuminator: William Christopher Holley's Genius web site is simultaneously a chest-thumping "Look At Me--I'm A Genius!" brag piece and a "Why Won't Anyone Hire Me?" whine/rant.
My take? It reminds me of the quote behind the dysfunction poster at despair.com--"The Only Consistent Feature of All of your Dissatisfying Relationships is You." It also reminds me of something else. Back in my elementary school days (basically, the Nixon and Ford Administrations), it was a well-known fact that I was the smartest kid in my class. Every year. Nobody else was close. A couple of kids thought they were, but they weren't. Now before you write me off as a Holley clone, here's my point: despite the fact that I spent those years in the company of the same sixty kids, and by the end of kindergarten all but the dimmest knew the score, I spent a lot of time and energy making damn sure that everybody around me knew I was the smartest kid in the class. Yet somehow I was always surprised when anybody called me 'arrogant.' I wasn't arrogant--I was just smarter than they were. Sure, it's a cliche, but it fit. It took me many many years before I realized exactly they thought that way (I'd previously attributed it to jealousy; I mean, the problem couldn't have been with me, could it?), and what did it was seeing myself at age 10 in the person of one of my son's friends. Let's call him Hal. Whenever any kid said anything incorrect, Hal corrected him. Whenever a question was asked, Hal was the first one to answer. If by chance another kid answered first, Hal gave a 'better' answer and then proceeded to explain why his answer was better. And on and on and on until I was ready to, ah, hell, I don't know what but it wouldn't have been very nice. My realization that I was seeing myself at that age was a whack on the side of the head unlike any I've experienced before or since. So to my classmates, I belatedly say, "I get it, and I'm sorry." So let's not be too hard on W. C. Holley; I just hope he gets a similar whack while he can still do something about it.
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 8:50:16 PM ----- BODY:2001.03.28 New from Nike--The Air Sprain!
A report in the British Journal of Sports Medicine suggests that air-filled basketball shoes may cause, rather than prevent, ankle injuries. Continuing on, however, the intrepid reader learns that the primary factor associated with ankle injuries is... previous ankle injuries! The Journal is expected to publish a report next month suggesting that the rich get richer.
On the Listening List: I just wrapped up Demolition Angel by Robert Crais (Amazon: paperback tape), about an LAPD detective and former bomb technician (and the reason for being a former bomb tech is a bomb that killed her partner and lover and injured her gravely) drawn into a bomb investigation that is far more than it initially seems. I'm not a big fan of the cop genre in general, but I really enjoyed this BoT. Patricia Kalember's narration is very good, except that she manages to make all the male characters except the villain sound like pansies.
The Three Mile Island melt (not meltdown--the Government says so!) occurred 22 years ago today. That this anniversary passed largely unnoticed was due primarily to a somewhat larger oops that happened in 1986.
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 8:48:05 PM ----- BODY:2001.03.27 If A Quip Falls On A Stairway, And No One Else Hears It, Is It Wit?
There's a French expression, "l'esprit de l'escalier" (literally, "the wit of the staircase"), which describes thinking of exactly the right thing to say when it's no longer relevant. That goes double for today's Featured Site, both because it'll help avoid "l'esprit de l'escalier" and because St. Patrick's Day was a week and a half ago. Without further ado, An tInneal Mallachtaí - The Curse Engine (my favorite). If you'd like a gentler example of Irish, there's the Word Of The Day In Irish page. If you just came off a ten-day St. Paddy's bender and now want to offer a traditional Irish toast, IrishAbroad is the place for you.
Today in history (courtesy of strive.to, whose web site appears to be broken at the moment):
- 1964: Anchorage, Alaska suffered the strongest earthquake ever to hit North America; 117 died.
- 1977: The worst aviation disaster on record (*cough*cough*) occurred on Tenerife in the Canary Islands: a KLM 747 collided with a Pan Am 747 on the runway, killing 577.
2001.03.26 OK, We Opened The Borders And Made Ashtrays Out Of All The Lenin Statues; Now What?
Simon Bone has a very nice site detailing "places in transition from authoritarian rule to, uh, something else." The opening quote about North Korea is funny in a pathetisad way. Of particular interest to me is the page describing his time in Moscow. And to think I was trying to angle my way onto a program that would have meant I'd spend some time there. Be careful what you wish for, eh?
Holy Maple Leaf, Batman, eh? You're being knocked off north of the border!
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 8:44:08 PM ----- BODY: 2001.03.25 Once The Big Fish Eats The Smaller Fish, The Smaller Fish Don't Get Laid No More...I spent several years of my life (and way more money than I want to think about) addicted to a particular flavor of crack. Now you can read the behind-the-scenes story of Wizards Of The Coast and how it went to Hell in a three-ring binder of nine-pocket pages.
And if the net weren't weird enough, you can have Zippy The Pinhead translate it for you! Disclaimer: The 'Zippy Meets Meta-HTML' page isn't an official ZTP page, so far as I can tell, but my GOD it's a HOLE all the way down to BURBANK (be sure and try your hand at the Unclaimed Property Bulletin Board System--you never know what you might have lost while in California)!
And speaking of California, Everything2 has the etymology behind why it's really called "The Land Of Hot Sex".
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 8:40:08 PM ----- BODY: 2001.03.24 I May Seek You, But I Don't Seek Embedded Ads!2001.03.23 No Taco For You! or Tie A Yellow Ribbon Around Old Glory.
Well, Mir made it down without killing anybody (at least not right away--refer to yesterday's entry about what might survive the landing). In all fairness, I'd like to note that Mir was designed with a life expectancy of three years, but survived for almost fifteen. That kind of puts the mishaps (the Russian word here is 'oopskis') in perspective.
Did you know there's a group of people who believe you can dodge most U.S. laws because almost all courtrooms have gold fringe around the U.S. flag therein? To this group, that makes the court an Admiralty court instead of a Common Law Court, and all kinds of pseudo-legalistic jiggery-pokery comes into play. Like writing "Without Prejudice, UCC 1-207" underneath the signature on your driver's license and thus becoming immune to any traffic ticket that does not stem from an incident harming another person. How well does it work? Ask this guy.
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AUTHOR: Chris Carter
DATE: 8:26:13 PM
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2001.03.22: It Came From Lower Earth Orbit
Perhaps a more important question even than "Can I wrangle a free taco out of Mir's demise?" is "What will survive the re-entry?" I direct your attention to these quotes:
"Although the porthole and other windows were made of extra-hard quartz glass and mounted on titanium covered with enamel, they were partly destroyed by a colony of fungi and bacteria visible to the naked eye."And
"We don’t know how they [space-grown microorganisms] will behave if they get back into regular Earth conditions."
And if that doesn't rock your world, how about this--Stephen Hawking's secret double life as a gangsta rapper?
-------- AUTHOR: Chris Carter DATE: 8:21:16 PM ----- BODY:2001.03.21: Connect the jumper cables, wait for some lightning, and POOF!
OK, so this is the online equivalent of slapping a new front door on a half-remodeled house and calling it done. Sue me. Anyway, here's the new look for the site, and yes, I'm adding a weblog just like sixty gazillion other people. Squarely on the trailing edge, that's me. Over the next couple of weeks, I'll update the other pages (a/k/a "The Real Content") for a smoother look. I'll also be adding a lot of stuff I've written that never made it online. Don't worry if you're pining for how the site used to look (although I don't know why you would be, unless you've got a thing for state-of-the-art Web design circa 1995); I've got you covered.
Today's Big News:
Mad Sheep Disease in the US?
Where oh where will the rocket come down? And more importantly, can I finagle a free taco out of the deal?
And speaking of Taco Bell, Hindu Couple Lose Meat-In-Rice Claim.
On almost a daily basis, I hit Google looking for some weird combination of words, usually in connection with a conversation I had that day.
Today's Corn-Fed Google Search: "orgone machine".