I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, um, some people out there in our nation don’t have maps and, uh, I believe that our, uh, education like such as, uh, South Africa and, uh, the Iraq and everywhere like such as, and I believe that they should, uh, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, should help South Africa and should help Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future.
--Miss South Carolina Teen Lauren Caitlin Upton, after being asked why a fifth of Americans can’t locate the U.S on a world map
Yes, long-time readers, I've officially hit ONE HUNDRED PAGES of this drivel. I find it more amazing that I've been doing this for twelve and a half years, or a quarter of my entire life.
"To give up resolutions. And I recommend that you, too, shun this arbitrary ritual – it inevitably leads to failure and depression. "As Mark Twain wrote in 1863: 'Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever.'"
1/2
GREAT MOMENTS IN COURTROOM TESTIMONY
Attorney: What do you do for a living? Witness: I help my brother. Attorney: What does your brother do? Witness: Nothing.
--actual courtroom testimony
Probably the best decision I've made in the 12.5 years of this page was posting the Stupidest Things Ever Said calendars, as I can pretend to have daily content without actually creating any. And, yeah, I used to be funnier. Hey, smartass, YOU used to be...umm...YOUNGER! Like 5 years ago, you were over 1,800 days less old! Answer me that, smartypants!
1/3
FOR SOME REASON, THEY NOW HAVE PROBLEMS GETTING DATES
JAPANESE SCIENTISTS GROW FROG EYES AND EARS
--actual newspaper headline
There's really nothing insightful about saying "The weatherman is always wrong! It's the only job where you get that much money for always being wrong!" That's not true. You'd get paid more for being even wronger by being a right-wing pundit on FOX. That said, the weatherman is always wrong! At least as far as snowstorms this season. Today we had the sixth in 4 weeks. The five (predicted as) major storms turned out to be minor, and the minor one turned out to be major, causing huge delays in the morning commute. I was really worried about my new at-work-at-8AM schedule due to winter weather. Driving home from work at 8 or 9PM is miserable enough, but usually there's no real traffic. Back in mid-October there was an early freeze (that the weathermen didn't predict) that gave me a 90-minute commute. That terrible morning snowstorm? My day off. Today's, while nowhere near how bad they said it would be, would've been a commute from hell...If I worked today. That's what's weird this year. I've dodged the bullet 6 times now. The snow ends before I leave, or starts after I do, or it snows for 6 hours before leaving but it's exactly warm enough that it doesn't even collect on the grass until after I'm home... Six times in a month is a lot of snow, even by New England standards. And we have 6 to 8 weeks of this crap left to go. Two years ago, if my car had spun out and not hit the guardrail in a snowstorm, 2 tractor-trailers and a bus would've smashed into me at 50MPH. Since then, I really don't like driving in the snow. Even less, dying in it.
Snow day in the Young household!
My gourd, where'd that giant snowbank come from?! Oh, wait--that's Killsy. And if you're thinking, "Wow! DJ's getting big!"--
--you'd be right!
(There's some forced perspective due to the camera angle; he really isn't the size of a freakin' jaguar)
Ireland, land of (half of my) forebears, proves itself crazy again, and passes a draconianly ludicrous blasphemy law. Yeah, Eire, party like it's 1599! Of course, an Irish not-insane site has published 25 blasphemous quotes to test the potato-headed law. It contains the usual subjects (Hitchens and Dawkins, Carlin and Zappa), one "where'd that come from?" contender (Bjork dissing Bhuddism), and a few "Wait, WHO?!"s (the Pope, Muhammed, and Jeez, taking a break from appearing in people's food). Some of the later ones are kinda funny.
1/4
BOOKS, USEFUL
• Beyond Leaf Raking • Guide to Eskimo Rolling • Hand-Grenade Throwing as a College Sport
--actual book titles
Having talked about dodging the driving in winter bullet yesterday, today I got hit by it. Because it snowed yesterday. That's all; the roads were just wet, but apparently knowing that they were wet from melted snow and not rain dropped the top speed by 35MPH. Of course, I still don't understand why traffic slows to a crawl when there's a car parked completely off onto the shoulder, you know, just sitting there, not on fire or full of Nazis and dragging Indiana Jones by his bullwhip behind it. That's like slowing down because there's a streetlight there.
I found an online coupon for a free Taco Bell "Fresca" taco from their "Drive-Thru Diet" menu. So it's a taco in a cup of bad diet soda? Eww! No, just a taco. I haven't had Taco Smell for maybe 7 or 8 years and I semi-craved it, so what the hey. The cashier seemed utterly baffled by my order, "a chicken Fresca taco and 2 regular beef crispy tacos," and it came in 2 seperate waves, also 2 bags. I got home and realized that they hadn't given me any sauce (not that I asked for any; they used to ask you) and (WARNING, INCOMING HILARIOUS PUN, SEEK SHELTER) it was more like a Fiasco taco, ha ha! (THE ALL-CLEAR HAS SOUNDED; IT IS SAFE TO LEAVE THE PUN SHELTERS) It was such a sloppy mess that I should've just asked them to dump the ingredients in my lap. And unless Taco Bell's chicken is dark brown (and it could be), I didn't get chicken. I think I got steak, and I think that their definition of "steak" is "Hey, what's left over on the slaughterhouse floor? You guys using that?" The regular tacos weren't that much less messy. This morning I wondered "What exactly is 'processed food'? Fast food, right? And you're not supposed to eat that." I've decided "processed food" is what your stomach tells you 2 hours after eating it, "Could you not do that again?" Well, it cured me of my Taco Bell craving. Permanently.
1/5
EMPLOYEES, DREAM
Reason for leaving last job:
• The responsibility made me nervous. • They insisted that all employees get to work by 8:45 every morning. Couldn’t work under those conditions. • Maturity leave.
--from actual job applications
1/6
SCIENTOLOGISTS, CLEAR WORDS ABOUT, YA KNOW?
We know . . . we just know . . . I don’t know, but we just know . . . ya know, it’s just it . . . we see things . . . whatever, we’re here to help . . .
--actor Tom Cruise
There wasn't a surprise message on the answering machine this morning, so that meant that I was going to the Crack Bar and get together with that summit of beauty, wit and profanity, Mrs Jessica. Proof that I would make a terrible boyfriend: I commented on the rarity of her having her hair down, but it took me 2 hours to notice that she'd dyed it black. We had "Eggs in a basket," which involved 2 slices of toast with a hole filled with eggs in the middle. I finally learned to order my bacon "extra crispy," as otherwise it comes "extra greasy in a puddle of pig fat." We're the same height and weight and both have weird metabolisms. I ended up doggie bagging some of my food, as I don't need to eat a lot, while she's a bottomless pit who burns it off seemingly as she eats it. She gave me an unexpected Xmas present in Peanuts wrapping paper. It was from the baby section of a dollar store, and was a blanket with a flying robot on it. She likes to give me robots. Also, some gumball machine bucktoothed midget alien, some cat toys, and a cat. A white ceramic one lying in repose, and looking as beautiful as you-know-which of my kids. We talked mainly about her cat rescue work at the no-kill shelter. She saved a feral mom and her son, and mom basically had everything wrong with that she could have wrong with her--herpes virus, fleas, parasites, a weight of 3 pounds ("When I picked her up, I thought I was going to break her!"), a mouth full of rotted teeth and pus-filled sores, constipation beyond belief because her intestine was growing outside of her body...and she not only lived, she and her child are going to a feral save house in New York. She and her friend paid for all of her medical work out of pocket, and the poor cats still have to have all their teeth pulled. One of the feral colonies she "manages" (feeds and takes care of) is near the property of some societal leech. His parents gave him their house, which is an old Victorian that he's let go to such a level of crap that it'd probably be torn down when it's sold. He's on disability for his legs (and rides a Harley), and other aid programs. He has a dirt basement and that's where he lets his dog shit (he just covers it up with baking soda--enjoy your inevitable ringworm, pal). Oh, and he's classy enough that he steals the food Jess leaves out for the ferals for his own cats, and gives the ferals his microwave meal table scraps. Seriously, how knuckle-draggy to you have to be to steal from homeless cats? Is there not a nearby orphannge you could rob? She now has 4 cats, 5 if you count the semi-feral outdoor cat she takes care of. Her new boy is Ham, a polydactyl with TEN toes on EACH of his front paws! Byron is so jealous! Since we were at Cracker Barrel, she bought some 75%-off Xmas crap ornaments, passing on the Elvis ones, and some cat stickers. Then we went to our same old antique store. Digging through some costume jewelry, she asked me "What's a...skepter?" "Scepter," I said. "It's thing royalty holds. You're looking at the back, so it looks like a spoon." "I'm royalty," she said. "At least in my head!" She bought that, and also a nice crystal mermaid on a rock, and I think her total was $8. She tried on some funky old sunglasses.
STYLIN'! She's wearing a Malificent pin, but other than that, she was Nightmare Before Christmas themed: shirt, scarf, purse. I noticed that immediately upon meeting her, but didn't catch the black hair dye. We meant to check out a stone carving store we ran across at the Ren Fest last year, but they were open Thurs-Sun, so we ended it there. We both filled up our cars on gas at a station by the Crack Bar that has "WaCkY! Wednesdays 6 CENTS OFF!!" (that's how it was spelled), so it was about as cheap as you can get in overpriced southern New England, and went our seperate ways. I did find a use for the baby blanket she gave me, as a Victorian-era chair doily:
The towel on the chair's seat is there because Byron likes to sleep there, and thus likes to barf there.
The 2009 Darwin Awards. These are never really funny, due to the people actually dying, but they are an object lesson in "don't be willfully stupid."
Family Feud host Richard Dawson: Name something parents teach their children to use. Contestant: I think the teacher might use their underwear.
SHAWT: He's an old man who is dying by degrees from his alcoholism. He buys Jim Beam nips, but he buys at least a liter's worth of them a day from us, and who knows if he's buying from somewhere else? He also smokes a pack a day. And changes his clothes...never. Same clothes for the 2 years he's been coming in. In the summer, he ditches the hat and coat, but otherwise, exactly the same. His rank stink smells like he passes out in them every night. He has someone trim his beard and hair annually. But he makes sure he his combover is perfect. Ain't gonna get the ladies if they know you're balding! It's like choosing your food based on the colors it will leave when you vomit all over your shirt and leave it there to crust off.
• MINNIE MOUSE?WHEN MINNIET’S KEPPY, WITH THIS HEAT HER GUGGIE A THELS SWALY • MICKEY MOUSE?DO AGAINST THE EURO, YEN AGAINST THE MICKEY • MICKDY MOUSE
--slogans on children’s clothing, China
1/9
THEY NEED SOMEONE WHO CAN START IMMEDIATELY
THE AMERICAN COPY EDITING SOCIETY: Looking for a conservative who ca work to achievie consensus with a diverse editorial board.
--job listing on the website of the American Copy Editing Society
I'd heard of some cut-up/collage band thing called "Beatlerape," but I never came across their stuff, even just to hear it, and thus forgot about it. Until today, in a WFMU piece that has 3 tracks. They also apparently had a thing about Star Trek, which is another plus in my book. Note: does not have a good beat, nor you can dance to it.
The must-see movie of late 2010: Jackboots on Whitehall. No trailer yet, but it looks NUTS.
1/10
WOULDN’T ROPE BE EASIER?
A familiar question was reopened "how the Sunday School children are to be attached to the Church" and once more the use of adhesive stamps was recommended.
--in a New Zealand church bulletin
1/11
WE HEAR IT’S GREAT FOR THE HANDS, TOO!
CHICKEN POOP LIP BALM $3.99
--sign in a Walgreen’s window, Indianapolis (thanks to Craig Downey)
SHAWT, or PIGIN (Person I'm Glad I'm Not): the guy who spent 2 and a half hours in the store scratching "instant win lose" tickets. Over one hundred of them, at $2 each. He did occasionally win--his $2 back.
SHAWT(wenty years ago): I don't believe I have ever related the story of the only time in my retail career that I got revenge on an asshole customer. I was working at Sam Goody, a record store. 3 weeks after Christmas, I was asked by a man about 40, "Do you have that new song they play on WTIC? It's a dance song, something about love?" That was 100% of his information--he shrugged when I asked him for a song title or artist name. I was the classic rock/classical music/electronica guy, not the top 40 person, so I smiled and said "I don't listen to that station. Let me get Emma, she'd kn--" And he was instantly yelling at me, "You work in a RECORD STORE! You don't know?! This is ridiculous! What are you, STUPID?!" No, I'm not. I don't listen to every fucking possible radio station and MEMORIZE songs. I know a particular subset of music; that's why everyone comes to me about the things I know. Have you asked your insurance agent or mailman if they know the song? You're the guy who's heard it enough to want to buy it. If I'm stupid for not knowing, what does that make you? Emma got some more details from him--how it went, lyrics--and found his $1.99 cassingle. After paying, he purposely sought me out, as he wasn't done with me yet. In front of everyone, he began snarling again, ending with "If you worked for ME, I'd have you FIRED!" This after I had his question answered within a minute of him asking. As I've said before, if you act like an asshole to a retail person, all you become is today's asshole du jour. He became the pissed-off talk of the store, and Emma hated him the most. Because...he was one of us. His nametag said that he was the Manager of the Men's Department at G. Fox, the clothing store down the other end of the Buckland Mall. A fellow retail slave abusing another retail slave over nothing? Unthinkable! The thing retail employees always think when you scream "I'll get you FIRED!" is "And where do you work, so I can do the same to you?" Well, I did know where he worked. What he didn't know is that my parents had given me $300 of clothes from G. Fox for Xmas, with the tags attached, "in case you don't like them." In those days, Fox's policy was that if you had no receipt, but the tags were on, they'd send you a check 3 weeks later for the value. I abruptly decided, "I don't like any of these clothes." I brought them to Fox's men's department the next day, and guess who was working. His eyes opened wide in horror as I piled 3 Franklin's worth of returns on the counter, and didn't want to buy anything, just mail the check, please. I smiled and nodded at him. He was surely thinking "There goes my sales goal for the week--or the month!" I almost asked the guy doing the return, "Hey, do you have that shirt? It's by that designer? It has buttons?" But I realized that the manager was such a fucking asshole that he might take it out on another retail slave, so when I left I just said "THANK YOU!" as cheerfully and loudly as I could. Revenge is a dish best served clothed.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince almost seemed like someone took a 700-page book and pared it down into a 2 1/2 hour movie. "Scene [gap] Scene [gap] Scene..."
From 2002, Life On the Net in 2004. Ha ha! They were wrong! No, it was really a satire based on the legislation phone companies were desperate to pass back then. On the other hand, one of the oldest tropes of the internet has come to "life": Roxxxy the robotic girlfriend, with all the appropriate holes. "The anatomically-correct robot has an articulated skeleton that can move like a person but cannot walk or independently move its limbs." WOW, nothing's sexier than a parapalegic! She also looks like she's passed out, a plus for all you frat boys who didn't get the sorority sisters to chug enough Keystone Light. "She knows exactly what you like," Mr Hines said of Roxxxy, noting that Rocky will also come with personalities. "If you like Porsches, she likes Porsches. If you like soccer, she likes soccer." If you like having no friends and fucking plastic vaginas, she likes you having no friends. What, not creepy enough for ya?
Inspiration for the sex robot sprang from the September 11, 2001 attacks, when planes crashed into the World Trade Centre in New York City, the Pentagon and an empty field in Pennsylvania. "I had a friend who passed away in 9/11," Mr Hines said. "I promised myself I would create a program to store his personality, and that became the foundation for Roxxxy True Companion."
I...what? I'm fucking the personality of a dead man killed by terrorists? That...doesn't get me particularly hard...Or do you mean he just liked fucking blow-up dolls? ...you want to fuck a thing that looks like a corpse, while thinking of a guy who is a corpse? If I get killed by terrorists (well, fundamentalist Muslims do hate alcohol; it could happen), umm, donate money to the ACLU or Humane Society in my memory, not base a fuckbot on me.
1/12
BRAIN SYNAPSES, NOT MOVING TOO WELL
Tech support: How fast does your modem go? Customer: It’s not moving. It’s just sitting there.
Smith isn’t the only one who is happy after a thorough ball-buffing. Frank Gore had some fumbling problems early in the year. But Gore doesn’t seem to have any trouble holding onto Smith’s balls. The Broncos, who come from the capital of ball-doctoring, may want to keep Jay Cutler’s balls in a humidor so the rookie’s passes don’t sail on him. But the Broncos backs and receivers may have trouble grasping soggy balls.
--article on Fox Sports NFL (thanks to Luis Yanez)
YOU SHOULD SEE THE WINE BILL!
Buy Two Dinner Entrees & get $500 OFF! With Coupon Only. Only one coupon per customer.
--coupon for a restaurant
Yes, I didn't post the barest of anything yesterday. Too much Civ2 and the 2nd disc of The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse--it just gets crazier as it goes along; highly recommended to all John K. fans. So to make up for it--KITTY PICS!!
"In Soviet Russia, ceramic cat nuzzles CAT! And Thanos pokes CAT! And this is why Yakoff Smirnoff doesn't get GIGS anymore!"
Pictures taken 5 seconds apart: When it comes to catnip, DJ is still an eater...
...AND a roller.
I HAZ A BOX
...AND A BATHS.
"Oh, deah! Such a display of passion! I must retire to mah fainting couch, which is this floor that hasn't been vacuumed since the Clinton administration! Oh, sigh!"
A post on Way of Cats titled Why Do Cats Hide Things? made me remember a story once told here, but over a period of months. Here's the synopsis:
At my job, we got a locking cash box that had only 2 keys. We had 3 managers, so the idea was that we would swap the 2nd key between whoever closed that night to the next day’s closer. I was first up, and I didn’t put it on my keychain, as I was only going to give it to someone else the next day. But Kitten Byron had other ideas! It was gone the next day. I crawled all over the floor, looking everywhere and groping under furniture trying to find it. I finally gave up. I had to go to work (and explain why I had no key). I’d find it when I got home. It turned out to be no big deal; we had a spare, and also discovered that our $50 cash box could be opened with a freakin’ bent paperclip. I didn’t find the key when I got home that night, despite the most thorough search ever. I joked that I might find it in a day or 2 in the litterbox. But I didn’t. I kept looking for weeks, and it never reappeared. I did finally find it. Just lying on the floor, out in the open. After SIX MONTHS. Byron had hidden it somewhere, kept it there, then brought it out. And a good thing, as the cheap first key had broken in half since then, and so Byron’s key replaced its replacement–which, yeah, was a bent paper clip!
1/15
INSTRUCTIONS, DIFFICULT TO FOLLOW
Be sure to wear your long-sleeved shirts and long-sleeved pants.
--newscaster David Robichaud, WBZ News (Boston), reporting on the scheduled spraying for mosquitoes (thanks to James D. Stranieri)
1/16
IMAGERY, IMPOSSIBLE
They are staring down the barrel of a wooden spoon.
--rugby player Will Greenwood
Wow, that Dollar Tree cat wand was certainly worth a buck. Is this one's appeal based on the fact that the "fish" is 2/3rds cloth, with the middle a slice of the edible oil filter, loofah? Or the fact that the 3 pieces pivot seperately? Dunno, but it's so enticing, even Kill Kill plays with it. Tonight it was lying in front of the door, apparently dragged there by someone who wanted to have me use it as soon as I got home. I picked it up and DJ skipped a few steps before me, swatting at it, so I have my theory as to who put it there. Then all 3 cats formed a circle and attacked it in turn. Downside: it's a dollar, so the wand isn't going to last long (when it snaps, I'll try tying the rest to a bamboo backscratcher). And the cord has wrapped itself around the wrists of both Byron and DJ, Deej requiring aid in removing it, and Byron yanking it from my hand and freeing himself on his own. Bigfoot's wary of it now. He doesn't try to catch it, he tries to smack it away from him while dodging backward. Much in the way a human would attack a wasp with a newspaper, ready to leap to safety if the blow fails. He still enjoys it, just in a much different--and to me, more amusing--way.
1/17
PERMANENCE, IMPERMANENT
These measures are permanent . . . for now.
--head of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority Jacques Duchesneau, about airport security measures (thanks to Wendy Mooney)
I've been planning to fix the old Geocities News posts--just a matter of cutting out some Geo-created trash code, and inserting a correct "back" link. But days off are for not being productive, and while I knew it wouldn't take a huge amount of time, it would be tedious. So it became something to do on my next day off for a few months. I got an email from someone who missed the Space Ghost mystings, so that motivated me to get started recreating (as best as possible) the old Vienna/9939 page. The Old News are up without the weird Geo crap, although I'm sure there are artifacts from the transfer. I really don't think the audience is there to justify me fine-tuning over a meg of text. My plan/overly optimistic hope is that I can put up a mysting once or twice a week. Those I will have to edit carefully. And never underestimate my ability to procrastinate.
Many years ago, for lack of anything better to do, I channel surfed late at night. I came across...something. It was 4 heavily made-up floating heads lip-synching and mugging to some song. I was instantly transfixed--is this supposed to be funny? Because it isn't. Is it supposed to be weird? Because it isn't the good, creatively interesting kind of weird. Then it ended, and the screen cut to a guy at a desk. Oh, it's that Chevy Chase talk show! I thought. I hate this guy! The audience was deathly silent. Like me, they had no idea what they'd just watched was supposed to be. Chevy stuttered a nervous laugh, his brow glistening with perspiration. Wow, I thought, this is what flop sweat looks like! I thought that I should watch at least one of these shows, starring the least entertaining entertainer ever. Not now, of course. Later. But in a week, the show was gone. I haven't been following the to-do over Leno and O'Brian, although one gleams news about it against one's will. There's an interesting, if long, lesson about how late night history from 50 years ago is repeating itself. It focuses somewhat on Allen and Paar, but mainly on what's considered the worst talk show in TV history, The Jerry Lewis Show, AKA "the showbiz equivalent of being on The Hindenburg."
1/18
FANS, KNOWLEDGEABLE
I am a really big Elvis fan and I think the real reason why we did the whole Elvis thing is because, you know, he’s from Vegas.
--pop star Britney Spears, speaking to the Boston Herald about the Elvis jumpsuit in her promotions for her Las Vegas HBO special
Edwards was indeed obsessed with hell and the devil, who lived inside the natives he ministered to. And he put the fire into "fire and brimstone" preaching. Indeed, he put the brimstone in, too. King of this genre, Edwards loved elaborate descriptions of torture, detailing grimly how God would dole out punishment.
God "abhors" you; like "a spider or some loathsome insect" he holds you "over the fire." God's "fiery floods" and "inconceivable fury" bind you to that "world of misery, that lake of burning brimstone." Unless you convert, "the dreadful pit of the glowing flames" and "hell's wide gaping mouth" await you. Only the elect could convert - the rest were doomed regardless. Edwards was indeed obsessed with hell and the devil, who lived inside the natives he ministered to. And he put the fire into "fire and brimstone" preaching. Indeed, he put the brimstone in, too. King of this genre, Edwards loved elaborate descriptions of torture, detailing grimly how God would dole out punishment. God "abhors" you; like "a spider or some loathsome insect" he holds you "over the fire." God's "fiery floods" and "inconceivable fury" bind you to that "world of misery, that lake of burning brimstone." Unless you convert, "the dreadful pit of the glowing flames" and "hell's wide gaping mouth" await you. Only the elect could convert - the rest were doomed regardless.
I felt the need to comment:
I went to South Windsor CT's Timothy Edwards Middle School, named after the town's founder. He was the father of Jonathon Edwards. There was even a commemorative plaque to Timmeh in the local Dairy Queen. In the late 1960s, I went to CCD, the Catholic version of bible school, and my mom taught an early 70s version of it for preteens. A liberal version, as she was against the Viet Nam War and a very pro-civil rights Johnson Democrat. But I was raised a devout Irish Catholic, one who was put on Earth to help everyone, not just my sect of my religion. Of course, being Irish, I was going to Hell for anything "bad" that I did. That's just how it works. At Timothy Edwards, we read that "spider" sermon. I was stunned. CCD told me that "God loves you, He wants to love you, and all you have to do is accept Him into your heart, and He will love you!' But Jonathon depicted God as a ruthless sadist, looking for the slightest excuse to toss me into the eternal fires, just as He would the lowliest, most inoffensive of spiders. His God was a psychopath. I was confused! Which one was right? The newer one, because it was more refined, or the older one, because it was that much closer in age to the Bible? At Mass, they always spoke of the Loving God. So I accepted that. Or thought that I did. It ate at me. Eventually I decided to just read the Bible from front to back. If I'd started with the New Testament, maybe my results would've varied. I really wanted to believe not just in a loving, forgiving God, but a consistent one. But it contradicted itself nonstop to what I'd been told, to the point where I couldn't ignore it. Eventually I hit Leviticus, the 2 or 3 hundred Commandments God forgot to give Moses the first time. I go to Hell if I...eat a grape that's fallen on the ground?! That's the strictest interpretation of the 5 Second Rule ever! If I cut my hair or shave, I go to Hell, even though that's how every Christian priest or preacher looks? "Nothing will turn you into an atheist faster than reading the Bible" - Penn Jillette. Thank you, South Windsor school system, to making me read a sermon that eventually lifted the scales from my eyes! As I like to say, "I was born Catholic. But I got better."
1/19
ITALIAN GOVERNMENT BIOGRAPHIES, STRANGE
GIANNI LETTA: E be for many years Head of the Office Press of the National Federation of the Knights of the Job and subsequently Head of the Office Studies and Documentation of the Agency Palace of the Civilisation of the Job.
--from the official ministers’ biographies on the Italian government’s English language site (later removed when the press discovered the numerous glaring errors)
1/20
TOP-TALKING
I’m not as top as I’d like to be, but I’m topper than the others.
--boxer Wladimir Klitschko
Turned out that a hit my page got was just from a Google search for "thoughtviper." I haven't Googled the page in years. But there was this oddity:
Last Updated 14629 days 20 hrs 53 mins ago.
Look, I admit that there's not always a lot of self-created content here of late. But I'm pretty sure I last updated yesterday, not 40 years ago.
Launched: Dec-31-1969
Again with the 40 years! I was an early adopter of the personal web page, but I'm pretty sure that it wasn't when I was ten and before the net actually existed. If you're implying that I can time travel, I can assure you that the last use I'd find for that is to go back and create Geocities.
Website Worth: $ 47 USD (€ 32 EUR)
Now you're just being insulting! And where did you grab that figure from?
Daily Ads Revenue: $ 0.11 USD (€ 0.07 EUR)
What? I have ads? Where? I begin to doubt your website analysis, sir or madam.
Servers Cost: Between $3/mo and $10/mo
AHH I'M LOSING MONEY WITH MY VANITY WEBSITE DESPITE ITS INVISIBLE ADS!!! Why did no one TELL me this?! GIVE ME MORE SUCH USEFUL DATA!!
What does 13 unique visitors per day mean to you? 1. They can fit in 53 sq ft. room. 2. Their weight of feces is 33 pounds per day (11,814 pounds/year). 3. They are waiting in a long line. The line distance is 0.01 miles. 4. They need to drink 7 gallons per day.
I DO NOT COUNT "FECES EXCRETION RATE" AS "USEFUL DATA" YOU COPROPHILIC WEIRDO! And drink 7 gallons of--what? Wait--DO NOT ANSWER THAT, YOU FREAK!
Feel free to put your url in, and learn how much your readers shit!
1/21
YES, HELLO?
I will conduct a respectful debate. Now, it will be dispirited; it will be spirited; because there are stark differences. I am a proud conservative, liberal Republi--conservative Republican? Hello? Easy there.
--Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona), while campaigning for president in 2008
'Survival of the Cutest' Proves Darwin Right. "This means, for instance, that a Collie has a skull shape that is more different from that of a Pekingese than the skull shape of the cat is from that of a walrus...Domestic dogs don't live in the wild so they don't have to run after things and kill them -- their food comes out of a tin and the toughest thing they'll ever have to chew is their owner's slippers. So they can get away with a lot of variation that would affect functions such as breathing and chewing and would therefore lead to their extinction." Yeah, breathing and chewing has become too hard for some dogs! Evolution of the dumbest. Yet more proof that CAT is the superior animal! You won't see them trying to eat Alpo with their nose while chewing air! "If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat."--Mark Twain
1/22
UNREQUITED LOVE SONGS, RIDICULOUS
• “I Got In at 2 With a 10 and Woke Up at 10 With a 2” • “At the Gas Station of Love, I Got the Self-Service Pump” • “If Love Were Oil, I’d Be a Quart Low"
--actual country song titles
Just today I was thinking about how "hard" English is to learn, something I've heard since childhood. This was always said in a smug "WE learned the hardest language EVAH! DUMB FURRINERS!" sense. When I reached my teenage years, I realized that English was the de facto lingua franca of the modern world. (I used me some Latin there!) It can't be that hard, I thought, if so many non-native speakers use it. And yesterday I was thinking about "Newspeak," the super-simplified language from the novel 1984, created by a dictatorial government to destroy subtlety in language so that basic concepts become not shades of grey, but pure opposites (it's not "very bad," it's "doubleplus ungood"), and give opposite names to what the Government intends (like when Dubya's Big Brothers named a bill designed to create more pollution "The Clean Air Act," or how a conservative federal judge just decided that "corporate lobbyists" should be called "Free Speech practitioners," when their billions will be used to overwhelm the free speech of everyone else). In search of the world’s hardest language has examples of each.
Berik, a language of New Guinea, also requires words to encode information that no English speaker considers. Verbs have endings, often obligatory, that tell what time of day something happened; telbener means “[he] drinks in the evening”. Where verbs take objects, an ending will tell their size: kitobana means “gives three large objects to a man in the sunlight.” Some verb-endings even say where the action of the verb takes place relative to the speaker: gwerantena means “to place a large object in a low place nearby”. Chindali, a Bantu language, has a similar feature. One cannot say simply that something happened; the verb ending shows whether it happened just now, earlier today, yesterday or before yesterday. The future tense works in the same way. ... Whorfianism has been criticised for years, but it has been making a comeback. Lera Boroditsky of Stanford University, for example, points to the Kuuk Thaayorre, aboriginals of northern Australia who have no words for “left” or “right”, using instead absolute directions such as “north” and “south-east” (as in “You have an ant on your south-west leg”). Ms Boroditsky says that any Kuuk Thaayorre child knows which way is south-east at any given time, whereas a roomful of Stanford professors, if asked to point south-east quickly, do little better than chance. The standard Kuuk Thayoorre greeting is “where are you going?”, with an answer being something like “north-north-east, in the middle distance.” Not knowing which direction is which, Ms Boroditsky notes, a Westerner could not get past “hello”. Universalists retort that such neo-Whorfians are finding trivial surface features of language: the claim that language truly constricts thinking is still not proven.
I don't know if you'll think this a fascinating article or not, as I wasn't an English major because I found language boring.
1/23
LET'S HIT HER WITH A PIE!
The man for me is now the cherry on the pie, but I'm the pie and my pie is good all by itself, even if I don't have a cherry.
--actress Halle Berry
I like big feets and I can not lie! You other brothers can't deny That when a cat walks in with a Jay Leno chin And catcher's mitts in your face Something something something! WORD!
1/24
GEE, THANKS
FREE ADVICE: BUNDLE UP WHEN OUT IN THE COLD
--headline in the Lexington (Kentucky) Herald-Leader
I have a vague recollection of watching the 1960s King Kong cartoon as a kitten. I ended up watching something else on Saturday mornings. Looking at the schedule, I was probably watching Frankenstein Jr, as it led into Space Ghost. Yes, kids, there was once a Beatles cartoon. It was a thousand times worse than you can imagine. King Kong wasn't that bad, having seen the video at the earlier link. It was basically a 60s Godzilla movie in 6 minutes. I wondered why I chose Frankenstein Jr over it, until Tom of T.H.U.M.B., the second part of the show, began. I recognized the title sequence immediately. It was a cartoon so bad that it insulted my intelligence. When I was seven. Seriously, try getting through it. It's of the "blundering slapstick detective" genre, but since it's 1966, he's a blundering spy. As even the greatest of peabrains could guess from the title, he's shrunken to Tom Thumb size. By a "shrinking laser beam ray gun" (pronounced "lay-ZAR" by the narrator who apparently had never heard the word out loud before). Apparently having not a single joke in their comedy left the producers of this crap feeling empty inside, so they jazzed things up with a bit of ching-chong Chinaman racism.
OUCH! That was bad! King Kong's eps at least get points for having a macrocephalic evil scientist--he looks like he weighs 90 pounds, 75 of which is skull--named "Doctor Who." Apparently, the regeneration went badly.
1/25
GUESSES, NOT SO HOT
Call-in host: What is the capital of Cuba? Contestant: Umm . . . Host: Take your time. Contestant: Umm . . . Host: Go on, have a guess. Contestant: Is it Belgium? Host: Err . . . not quite.
You are the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) Your sharp, irreverent humour both amuses and exasperates people. You’ve got a roving eye and keen mind – you’re definitely going places…
1/26
GET THE TALCUM POWDER!
Watch out! The road is very sweaty.
--English subtitle in a Hong Kong film
I think SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, is a waste of time and money. But as Carl Sagan said 30 years ago, it costs in a year as much as one attack helicopter, but which of the two could result in a total advance in human knowledge, and which would be obsolete in 20 years? Oh, I've no doubt that there is alien life; it'd be an awful waste of outer space if this dirtball held all of it. But I think SETI preassumes too much. There have been billions of species in Earth's lifetime, but only one uses technology. And the jury's still out on whether technology is a good thing. Sure, you're reading this on the web, but what's the biggest change technology ever wrought? The ability to exterminate ourselves intentionally with nuclear weapons. And the next big change was the ability to exterminate ourselves unintentionally through climate change. This reduces the odds that aliens will pick up our signals significantly, or we, theirs. SETI also assumes that aliens won't just have the technology we have, it assumes they'll use it exactly like us. What if their atmosphere doesn't allow radio waves to leave their planet? What if they don't develop radio, period? What if they do, but can't be bothered to run their own SETI? The whole idea of SETI isn't looking for aliens, it's all about looking for us. ...Which leads into 2 interesting articles. Why hasn't ET made contact yet? The scientist who created SETI and the famous "Drake Equation" (his name, coincidentally, is Drake!) adds his own, new limit to SETI: "The signals emanating from Earth most likely to reach distant civilisations are our TV broadcasts. But the switchover from analogue to digital television means "our voice" is being diminished." If aliens are so much like us they invent cable, the window for hearing their broadcasts drops to less than a century. And what if they're aren't like us? The face of first contact: What aliens look like . Well, might look like. Most interesting are the possible simple ones in our own solar system, like boulder-sized microbes with million-year lifespans on Titan, or glass-veined critters living in Hell, aka Venus, where it rains sulphuric acid all the time. I truly believe in alien life. I just don't believe it's transmitting its own version of "The Jay Leno Show" into the ether. And I fervently wish that it isn't.
1/27
INSURANCE CLAIMANTS, UNUSUAL
The accident happened because I had one eye on the truck in front, one eye on the pedestrian, and the other on the car behind.
--written on an insurance claim form
1/28
MAGAZINE CORRECTIONS, UDDERLY SURREALISTIC
Several readers complain that the dancing cow illustrating Feedback, 20 January, appears to have six teats. It was of course drawn as seen by an intoxicated fellow dancer.
--correction in NewScientist magazine
Line I keep hearing in a local radio ad; "Like the weather, variety is the spice of Life!" It's an ad for bread, and I do not understand it. Do they mean "Weather is the spice of Life!" or "Variety is the weather of Life!" or "Variety is the spice of Weather!"? None of those make any sense, certainly not in the "pertains to bread" sense. I guess the last one, well, okay, there is a lot of variety in New England's weather. For example, today's "40% chance of snow showers" now looks to be about 3 or 4 inches, which fell during both rush hours. For variety, it began right as I pulled into work, caused 75 accidents in the next hour, ended just before I left work in brilliant sunshine, then cranked right back up even worse during the afternoon commute 30 minutes after I got home. There was even a brief thundersnowstorm, something that I would've considered impossible. It affected me not, but for most people today, "Our weather's variety is the Shit of living here!" When we say "If you don't like the weather, wait 5 minutes" we don't mean it in a positive sense. "Our bread is like the weather; great for one slice, then filled with our smelliest worker's spiciest pubic hairs the next!" is not that great a slogan.
1/29
APPETIZERS, STRANGE
• Mulliffatwony Soop • Coleslow • Cheese Toss
--menu items at various Asian restaurants (thanks to Neil John Smith)
When I got home yesterday, the fishing pole toy was on the floor. Nothing unusual, but something looked a bit off, like there was something under the toy. But there were cats to greet and feed and Foxfire to launch, and it was forgotten for a long while. Eventually I looked closer--yes, there something under it, and when I picked it up, I yelled "BYRON!" No, he wasn't under it. But a big pile of cat puke was. It was in the 3-stage shape of his usual launched lunch: a nosecone of kibble swallowed, not chewed, with a booster rocket of semi-digested food at the base. But the middle was clearly the wet food that he'd turned his nose up at before I'd left. So it was Kill Kill? No, she wouldn't vomit on the carpet a foot from the linoleum; she only hurls on easily cleanable surfaces. (She usually runs for the bathroom, just like a human. Not heading to the toilet, but the tub, where clean-up is a simple matter of turning on the shower. Whether she does this because the bathroom's where the litterbox is, or because she learned it from me during my years of Young's Syndrome is a matter of debate) So, DJ then? He does eat like a pig, and would be the most likely candidate. But the thing is...did that cat toy fall completely at random, exactly covering up the ejecta, which, while highly unlikely, is possible. Or was it placed there to cover it up? I know, that's ridiculous, a cat being smart enough to do that! But drop a dime on the floor, then toss a quarter from 3 feet on it in an attempt to cover it up...it could happen, but it most likely wouldn't. And actually, it'd be more like dropping a dime and then covering it with another random dime. There is a cat who feels horribly guilty over puking on the carpet, although she's never been scolded about it, just heard "BYRON!" when I have to clean up some used Friskies from the carpet. And her nickname is "the Einstein Cat"... Occam's Razor says "Just a Coincidence." But...
"The results draw connections between the evolution of human language and biological organisms. Just as very distantly related organisms converge on evolutionary strategies in particular niches, languages may adapt to the social environments in which they are learned and used. "English, for all its confusing spelling and exceptions -- if a baker bakes, what does a grocer do? -- has a relatively simple grammar," Lupyan said. "Verbs are easy to conjugate and nouns are mostly pluralized by adding 's.' In comparison, a West African language like Hausa has dozens of ways to make nouns plural and in many languages -- Turkish, Aymara, Ladakhi, Ainu -- verbs like 'to know' have to include information about the origin of the speaker's knowledge. This information is often conveyed using complex rules, which the most widely-spoken languages on earth like English and Mandarin lack."
1/30
IT’S A BIRD, IT’S A PLANE, IT’S SUPERMEDIATOR!
And for you folks in Seattle, that fiery object in the sky last night was a mediator.
--radio broadcaster Paul Harvey, who corrected himself and identified the object as a “meteor” (thanks to Dave Boudreaux)
1/31
BUT PRESIDENT DO NOT
As yesterday’s positive report card shows, childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured.
--President George W. Bush, on the No Child Left Behind Act
II suppose that I say this every year right about exactly now, but no matter how much the refund is, the hour it takes to do your taxes is as fun as a barrel of monkeys! A non-metaphoric barrel, with the monkeys screaming and clawing each other in desperation, then bursting from the barrel to viciously attack everything in their way, leaving you thrashing on the floor with your eyeballs ripped out and jaw broken and infected with rabies. But with a $700 refund!
I never click on YouTubes when I'm given no reason to. That said,
JUST DO COKE AND METH, kids! Bugs and Daffy say so! Uppers are for WINNERS!
2/1
AND HIS LEFT SNEAKER HAD A SUNBURN ONCE
Many years ago the patient had frostbite of the right shoe.
--written on a patient’s medical chart
Word of the Day: Conjunctivitis! I think that may be what Killsy has. She's been winking her left eye a lot for 5 days. At first I just chuckled and said "Are you flirting with me?" But then I noticed Saturday that her eye was runny, and her eyelids swollen and red-rimmed. But it doesn't bother her. She doesn't overclean her eye, or even mind when I touch it. It doesn't bother her, but it bothers me. She's almost certainly going to the vet for my own peace of mind, but if you've had an experience with this, I'd like to know. Because she doesn't mind what's happened to her eye, but she sure hates the vet.
2/2
WABBITS WUNNING
Owen runs like a rabbit chasing after--what do rabbits run after? They run after nothing! Well, running after other rabbits.
--sportscaster Tom Tyrell
My advice: keep a team of cat ladies on hand! Both Mrs Jessica and Linda in the Comments recommended waiting to see if Killsy's eye gets worse or better. Today, it seems better; still runny, but eyelids back to normal size. Lily and Linda warned that conjunctivitus is highly contagious; since neither of the boys have any symptoms, it was probably just a scratch or the result of a tussle with DJ. We'll see, but the prognosis right now looks good.
Back in the Summer, Kevin sent me a "Join Facebook" email. And had several real-life friends do the same. This, of course, was because I adamantly refused to join next year's outdated social website, especially since the list of people from my past I want to catch with is a negative number. When I created the page, to my horror it listed as potential "friends" all the douchebags I went to high school with during the worst 4 years of my life. (As I once said on meeting one of the few people who didn't treat me like shit from high school just before the 10th reunion, "If I show up, hit the floor, because I probably have a sack of hand grenades.") That was enough for me; I deactivated the account. But then Imeem decided you needed a Facebook page to use it (as it was bought by Guess Who), and some freebies and activist sites require it, so I reactivated it. I went to shut it down, then realized...umm, I never bookmarked my own page. Ah, it's not going to hurt to leave it up for a couple of days until I figure it out. Who's going to find it? KitSplut, Queen and Creator of the SplutGlut, apparently used her splutter-sense and friended me. ("Verbing weirds nouns"--Calvin & Hobbes) As did Arica, whoever she is (Kitty: Is she Punkie, all grown up? Looks like her) So I just threw my hands in the air today, sent out a bunch of friendifying requesters from my email, and just let the MySpaceFriendsternext obsolete thing sit there. Feel free to send me a friend request, but also read the only posts on my wall (a wall! Just like in a public restroom!) and realize that I have no idea what the fucking thing is for, and will thus never use it.
2/3
AND WE HEAR THE JAIL SPA IS CLOSED AFTER LIGHTS-OUT, TOO
It’s so cruel what has happened to her. She wasn’t allowed to wax or use a moisturizer. Her skin is so dry right now.
--friend of Paris Hilton, after Hilton was in jail for two days
So, what would happen if a groundhog didn't see its shadow today? Six weeks minus one day of winter? Also: why does it always see its shadow? Is it because if it didn't, it would mean no more weeks of winter? Instant 60 degree temps? Because no, not in New England. Also also: who came up with this unbelievably supa-wicked-retahded tradition in the first place? A publicity-seeking woodchuck? "Well, I do have some fame from that 'How much wood would a woodchuck chuck' poem, but if I rebranded myself as a groundhog..."
8 Amazing Stories of Ninja Failure is pretty funny, especially the first story, which really was amazing. Because it didn't just involve Connecticut, or my least favorite member of Congress, or my hometown, but the intersection I live a quarter-mile from! I asume that it happened on a Sunday, meaning that I was right in this chair surfing the tubes as it happened. And this was the first I'd heard of it.
I've never mentioned here my utter contempt for monsters like Jenny McCarthy, who blame their kid's autism on vaccines, and have done everything they can to stop every child from being vaccinated because of this unreasonable obsession. 50 years ago when I was born, measles and polio and the fucking whooping cough were defeated. But these lunatics refuse to admit that hey, maybe autism is genetic (which I guess they take as a personal insult to their Perfect Genes, although that's not the case), so they find some insane thing to blame it on that isn't them. And because of their denial, kids are dying in increasing numbers from the diseases my parents didn't have to worry about me getting. Fucking whooping cough--in the 21st century, that's like dying from scurvy or a sabre-tooth tiger bite. The most frustrating thing is that it was all the doing of one guy, who used his falsified data to sell lots of books and speaking engagements. He became a millionaire, standing atop an evergrowing mountain of incredulous halfwits and dead babies. That bastard should be in jail. With untreated whooping cough. Is it all over now that he's been finally, completely discredited? Fuck no. It's the sunk-cost fallacy: these anti-vaxxer loons can never admit now that they were duped and they were wrong. They'll just keep on killing babies in the name of saving them. Unfortunately, it's called "herd immunity," meaning the more kids who are immunized, the less likely the deadly viruses can kill the rest. If it only killed their own spawn, well, heartless as it is to say, their viewpoints would die out in a generation. But weakening the herd immunity kills other people's babies. Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be Jenny McCarthys. Immunize them and just let them grow up.
2/4
THE BUCK STOPS HERE, HILLARY CLINTON AND
He doesn’t say I directly told him anything. He says that, you know, the fact that I expressed concern had an impact on him. [But] the mere expression of concern could be, I guess, taken to mean something more than it was meant.
--Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-New York), denying claims of her former aide that she requested the firing of White House office staff and their replacement with Arkansas cronies
Interesting: a true-or-false quiz that doesn't rate you on how right or wrong you are, but how much confidence you have in your answers. Meaning, 70% on a 100% true answer counts more than 100% on a false one. I was under the impression that it was timed, so I kinda rushed through it, although maybe I was 100% wrong about that. I got a 78, which it says is good, even though I got a LOT of them wrong. And got points for thinking that maybe I kinda was wrong.
2/5
SUSPECTS, OVERLY MELLOW
Man suspected of growing marijuana in his house: Do you want me to explain that [a diary detailing his drug-growing business] to you? Police officer: Didn’t you just talk to a lawyer? Suspect: Yes. Officer: What did he tell you? Suspect: I don’t remember. Officer: Didn’t he just tell you not to speak to me? Suspect: Oh, yeah. Officer: Then you probably shouldn’t explain it. Suspect: Oh, yeah. Thanks, man.
--conversation during an actual arrest
Well, I got nothing. Except that the weekly Indian music radio show just played Mera Naam Chin Chin Choo, which is always worth a listen.
2/6
WOO WOO WOO!
I prayed for snow on my wedding day. It was 32 degrees but it didn’t snow. I did get eight inches on my honeymoon, though.
--Jeopardy contestant, when asked about her winter wedding (thanks to Charles Tucker)
The Quotable Action Hero, a briefly-lived blog of not very good "Here's my snappy line while I kill you!" banter.
I may watch the Super Bowl halftime show tomorrow! I hear that it's Doctor the Who performing "My Regeneration!" Oh. Wait. Okay, misunderstood. "After this excruciating meeting he received a large check for royalties, left and went to a bar and got completely drunk. In that bar he encountered Paul Cook and Steve Jones of The Sex Pistols, who thought very highly of Pete for paving the way for Punk rock music. Townshend was conflicted because he feared The Who had sold out." And your halftime show is: "A bit of 'Baba O'Riley' (CSI: New York), a bit of 'Pinball Wizard,' a bit of the close of 'Tommy,' a bit of 'Who Are You' (classic CSI:), and a bit of 'Won't Get Fooled Again.' (CSI: Miami). It works -- it's quite a saga," Townshend tells the mag. Hey, Petey--who the fuck are you? "I hope I die before I get old --enough that I can't pimp every cent from my music!"
2/7
GREEK MYTHS, LARGE JAPANESE MONSTERS AND
We didn’t treat them like some Greek myth. There was no Godzilla out there.
--New York Giants player David Tyree, after beating the New England Patriots in the Superbowl
Words I've never heard any human being speak: "I like my condo association." That said, I hate my condo association. They sent out a tree trimming service to the condo. Nothing wrong with that. The beautiful 40 year old maple outside of my front window has a few dead branches. Then I noticed that the trunk had 2 orange X's spraypainted on it. These weren't tree surgeons, they were tree euthanizers! Of the 4 maples in front of my building, 3 had been Xed for the axe. And the next day, they were gone. Reason given for this: none. But I already know what the reason will be. They cut down a row of hedges several years ago. Late that March, I thought, It's Spring, so why don't I hear the songbirds I've heard for 18 years? Oh, right--they lived in the hedges! Now we only hear the melodious, soothing caw of the crow. The hedges were on the side of a hill, and were what the people in one building saw out their back windows. Ever since, rather than nesting songbirds, they've seen what the condo ass decided to replace those awful shrubs with: mulch and stumps. And their reason for killing the hedges, given after the fact: "They were there for 30 years." Yes, that was the entire explanation. Those maples were here for 40, so I assume that will be the reason given for their destruction. Hey, the buildings have been here for 40 years, too! Better tear 'em down! If you're the parent of a member of the condo ass, you better get out of town if you're over 60 years old! What will they replace the stumps I know have in front yard with? Christ, I hope with nothing. The asses have no ideas about landscaping except periodically killing anything already there. I lived here for a decade before they cut down all the tall hedges by the front driveway, and I discovered that we had this 4 foot high manhole on a concrete base. Reason: "To make the front driveway more beautiful." Their big "improvement" was to make it look like the front yard contained the entrance to Hitler's bunker. They replaced teh big shrubs with little scrubby shrubs. That began immediately dying. Within months, they were all shriveled, brown husks. So it didn't just look like we had Hitler hiding beneath the lawn, it looked like the aftermath of the Battle of Berlin. What, no craters? In some sort of denial at the beauty of their tableaux (that blows), they left the dead shrubs there for over a year. Replaced those with a few skanky crabapple trees, about a third of which died. To be expected, surely, when your front lawn contains unexploded Soviet artillery shells and subterranean Nazi molemen. "WILKOMEN to Castle Wolfenstein!" They planted some kind of willowy weed thing by the mailboxes, which looked like a mutant kind of swamp grass. For a month, as they planted them in October, and they died as Autumn progressed. This was a secret, too. I wonder why? "Since there's confusion as to where the units are," they said in the newsletter, "we're having some signs made to indicate which units are in which buildings. They will be professionally made, and are very attractive." Wow! So proud of this change that they actually told us about it before it happened! "Professionally made"...Seeing the signs, is it now a profession to be in "junior high shop class"? Or make a living as a "senile grandpa twiddling in the basement"? And yet there's no such thing as a "professional sign painter"? Ugly as these things were--small metal signs on sticks, painted in a font called "I have cataracts"--amazingly, the arrows on every sign pointed to the right. Half of the buildings are, of course, on the left. It really is confusing to find a unit in my complex; no one has ever found mine on the first try, and I generally have to stand outside it and wave. But it really didn't help that half the signs had to be put in backwards, showing a side as blank as the condo association's brains. Much as I wish these idiots had just left the trees, I hope they just leave the stumps and stop there. "Everyone loves puppies! So we're going to fill giant glass domes with puppies, without food, water or air! It should be beautiful for years! "Well, please excuse us while we go blow up the Earth. Seriously, why are you still hanging on to that old thing after 4 billion years?"
"The Pentagon’s mad science arm may have come up with its most radical project yet. Darpa is looking to re-write the laws of evolution to the military’s advantage, creating “synthetic organisms” that can live forever — or can be killed with the flick of a molecular switch."
The scariest part of the article: it never says what the Pentagon wants to do with these things. Are they making the real world equivalent of Vonnegut's world-destroying Ice-nine?
"In Soviet Russia, ceramic cat nuzzles CAT! And Thanos pokes CAT! And this is why Yakoff Smirnoff doesn't get GIGS anymore!"
...AND a roller.
I HAZ A BOX
...AND A BATHS.
"Oh, deah! Such a display of passion! I must retire to mah fainting couch, which is this floor that hasn't been vacuumed since the Clinton administration! Oh, sigh!"
