I wrote up my original Top 25 list for my iPod about a month after I got it. I've now had the iPod for several months, and like a rutted road that's seen heavy traffic, so my Top 25 list has become clearly defined. Certain things will become obvious: My favorite singer is Susanna Hoffs, and my favorite groups are The Bangles and Cracker. I also have a taste for cover songs, with artists doing someone else's song and sometimes actually doing it better. (Heresy!) Without further ado, here's my list, as well as a little video bonus thrown in (October rankings in red):
1. (#1) "She May Call You Up Tonight" - Matthew Sweet/Susanna Hoffs - Under The Covers, Vol. 1 (2006)
2. (#3) "And Your Bird Can Sing" - Matthew Sweet/Susanna Hoffs - Under The Covers, Vol. 1 (2006)
3. (#4) "Monday, Monday" - Matthew Sweet/Susanna Hoffs - Under The Covers, Vol. 1 (2006)
You may get the idea that I really liked that CD. And you'd be right. It's a collection of '60s cover songs, some well-known, others obscure to anyone who wasn't into the '60s music scene. The top song on my list falls into the latter category: It was originally done by The Left Banke (most famous for "Walk Away Renee," and like that song, this one was also written about her), and I really like the baroque arrangement. The twist is that in the original, the male vocalist was trying to keep another guy away from the girl, while in this version, the female vocalist is trying to keep the girl away from the guy. "And Your Bird Can Sing" was originally done by the Beatles on Rubber Soul. This version is pretty faithful to the original, but I like it better. "Monday, Monday" was a big hit for the Mamas and the Papas, of course. This version is in a different key, but it works well. And it gets played a lot on Mondays, just because.
4. (#2) "It's All Been Done" - Barenaked Ladies - Stunt (1998) - A great song with a storyline crammed into 3:26. Have we met before... and before... and before? (And haven't you read this before... Back in October? Yeah. I plagiarized myself!)
5. (NR) "Pride" - Susanna Hoffs - unreleased demo (1996) (downloadable here for free!) - Sometimes you find cool music in the oddest places. In this case, I found the song via Susanna Hoffs' Wikipedia entry, as an external link on Bill Bonk's site. If you're a Bangles or Susanna Hoffs fan at all, this song is a must-have! The download link is in MP3 format.
6. (NR) "Ring of Fire" - Social Distortion - Social Distortion (1990) - A full-on punked-out rave-up of the Johnny Cash classic. This version of the song kicks some serious ass.
7. (#7) "Family Tradition" - Cracker - Countrysides (2003) - This comes off an album where Cracker went out and played honkytonks under the name of Ironic Mullet. This is their cover version of one of Hank Williams, Jr.'s signature songs. Sobriety strictly optional.
8. (#6) "I Touch Myself" - Divinyls - Divinyls (1992) - Speaking of vocals, there's only one Christina Amphlett. You'll probably recognize the song if you saw the Austin Powers movies. Remember the scene when he made the Fembots heads' explode? Yeah, it's that song.
9. (NR) "Tear Off Your Own Head (It's A Doll Revolution) - The Bangles - Doll Revolution (2003) - The Bangles got back together after more than a decade of hiatus and came up with Doll Revolution. It has some good songs on it, including this song that was written and originally recorded by Elvis Costello. Susanna Hoffs does the lead vocal on this song.
10. (NR) "Jolene" - Mindy Smith, Featuring Dolly Parton - One Moment More (2004) - A wonderful remake of Dolly Parton's classic, with Mindy Smith's ethereal lead vocal and Dolly coming in at the end on the harmony.
11. (NR) "I Do" - Lisa Loeb - Firecracker (1997) - I'm pretty much indifferent to the rest of the album, but I loved this song. The arrangement and her voice were perfect for each other.
12. (NR) "Turning Japanese" - The Vapors - New Clear Days (1980) - You just had to be there. Great material for an air guitar solo.
13. (NR) "Dancing Queen" - Sixpence None the Richer - Best of... (1999) - I grew up in the 1970s, back before the gays had appropriated ABBA. I got this CD primarily for the songs "Kiss Me" and "There She Goes," but this one reached out and grabbed me. Leigh Nash's voice is perfect for the song, and the arrangement is excellent. There's also a good cover of Crowded House's "Don't Dream It's Over" on the CD.
14. (#11) "Teen Angst (What The World Needs Now)" - Cracker - Cracker (1992) - "What the world needs now is another folk singer, like I need a hole in my head."
15. (NR) "Monster" - Fred Schneider - Fred Schneider and the Shake Society (1984/1991) - This is an oddity, in more ways than one. The CD originally came out under that title in 1984, and was re-released in 1991 as just Fred Schneider. The video below came out in 1985. Fellow B-52 Kate Pierson appears in the background vocals, but wasn't in the video.
16. (NR) "Blue" - LeAnn Rimes - Blue (1996) - I was late to the party on this one. Last fall, after having lunch with my dad, I was driving home and heard this song on the contemporary country station and I was just blown away by her voice. "Who is that?!" I asked. The radio was no help, but fortunately, all you need to do is type some song lyrics into Google and you'll find out. I was even more amazed when I found out that she was only 13 when this CD was recorded! I ordered Blue at a bargain-basement price from Amazon.com, and it was worth every penny I paid for it. This song is just the tip of the iceberg.
17. (NR) "Blue Collar Man" - Styx - Pieces of Eight (1978) - Actually, I got this off the Greatest Hits CD, but the original is considerably older. A great anthem for any man who works long nights with impossible odds, keeping his back to the wall...
18. (#8) "Mr. Wrong" - Cracker - Cracker (1992) - Another amusing song from Cracker's debut CD.
19. (NR) "Cold December (In Your Heart)" - Glen Campbell - By The Time I Get To Phoenix (1968) - This was one of the albums I grew up with as a kid. This song was never a hit, but maybe it should have been. The song is dated, with its lush strings, but I like it.
20. (#17) "Pictures of Matchstick Men" - Cracker - Hello, Cleveland! (Forever bonus disc) (2002) - "Hey, waitaminute! That's a Camper Van Beethoven song!" you say. And you're right. But David Lowery was in Camper Van Beethoven, which is why he's doing the song on this live disc. Love the wailing guitar chords that open this song.
21. (NR) "Whole Lotta Lovin'" - Huey Lewis & The News - Fore! (1986) - I saw Huey Lewis & The News with the Tower of Power horns in Berlin in 1987. The opening act was a woman I'd never heard of who did an acoustic set that was so good that I bought her CD at the concert hall. Her name? Melissa Etheridge. Huey and the boys did a great show, too.
22. (NR) "On A Bad Day" - Kasey Chambers - Barricades and Brickwalls (2002)
23. (NR) "A Little Bit Lonesome" - Kasey Chambers - Barricades and Brickwalls (2002)
A couple of great songs by an Australian singer doing Americana. She really sells you on the songs.
24. (#15) "Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down" - Cracker - Countrysides (2003) - This time, they do Merle Haggard. Again, sobriety strictly optional.
25. (NR) "Star, Star" - Joan Jett - Album (1983) - A cover of the Rolling Stones' X-rated classic. It was controversial when it first came out as an uncredited song that only appeared on the cassette tape, not the vinyl album. It's on the CD of Album, as well as on certain greatest hits collections. The song is sizzlingly raunchy.
5.16.2007
5.15.2007
As Seen On TV
DirecTV has a music channel called "The 101," which mostly shows concerts by various musical acts. Most of them are groups that I've never heard of, so I don't watch it much. However, over the weekend, they had Heart performing their Dreamboat Annie album from 1976, live in its entirety, plus a few bonus cover songs at the end, including Led Zeppelin. The show opened with an interview of the Wilson sisters (Ann and Nancy) about the early part of their careers, their influences, etc. I enjoyed the show.
Yesterday, I spent most of the day watching stuff in the history and science channels. There's a group of several of them. Among the highlights was Meerkat Manor on the Animal Planet channel, which follows the adventures of a group of meerkats in the Kalahari Desert of South Africa. Some of the little critters have radio tags, so that the scientific researchers can keep track of them. The show is amusing at times, although it is "real life," and sometimes bad things happen to the band of meerkats that are the protagonists.
The other interesting show I watched was on one of the History Channels, and was about the Gallipoli campaign of 1915, one of the most disastrous series of battles for Britain and its ANZAC allies. The campaign was the brainchild of Winston Churchill, who decided to try to attack Germany and its allies through Turkey's Dardanelles, in order to come at them from behind and break the deadlock of trench warfare in France. It was hurriedly arranged and poorly planned, and ended up costing many thousands of lives, and it cost Churchill his political career at the time.
To be honest, I've never really understood World War I. Unlike later wars of the 20th Century, there were no ideological underpinnings. Fighting fascism and Japanese imperialism in World War II, fighting communism during the Cold War, fighting Islamic jihadism today, those all make sense to anyone who grew up in the second half of the 20th Century. All of those opposing ideologies sought to enslave and subjugate mankind, and it was our duty as liberty-loving Americans to oppose them. But World War I? Like so many earlier European wars, it all seemed to be about imperialism and plundering the resources of other nations. From that viewpoint, there was little to choose from between the nations on either side; some were more authoritarian than others, but none really were "our" kind of people. No wonder that Americans had no desire to get involved in the war.
Both sets of alliances seemed to think that they would win quickly and easily over their enemies, and that they would get rich plunder from their victory. They miscalculated horribly; they didn't understand just how deadly modern machine guns were, and how other deadly new technology (tanks, aircraft, poison gas) would increase the casualties exponentially from earlier wars. Instead of a quick victory, they had a long, bloody stalemate, a meatgrinder trench war into which they fed the flower of a generation, with tragic results. The end result was that the war that European states fought for imperial gain led to the downfall of those empires in the ensuing decades, and the eclipse of European power by the rise of America and the Soviet Union.
Yesterday, I spent most of the day watching stuff in the history and science channels. There's a group of several of them. Among the highlights was Meerkat Manor on the Animal Planet channel, which follows the adventures of a group of meerkats in the Kalahari Desert of South Africa. Some of the little critters have radio tags, so that the scientific researchers can keep track of them. The show is amusing at times, although it is "real life," and sometimes bad things happen to the band of meerkats that are the protagonists.
The other interesting show I watched was on one of the History Channels, and was about the Gallipoli campaign of 1915, one of the most disastrous series of battles for Britain and its ANZAC allies. The campaign was the brainchild of Winston Churchill, who decided to try to attack Germany and its allies through Turkey's Dardanelles, in order to come at them from behind and break the deadlock of trench warfare in France. It was hurriedly arranged and poorly planned, and ended up costing many thousands of lives, and it cost Churchill his political career at the time.
To be honest, I've never really understood World War I. Unlike later wars of the 20th Century, there were no ideological underpinnings. Fighting fascism and Japanese imperialism in World War II, fighting communism during the Cold War, fighting Islamic jihadism today, those all make sense to anyone who grew up in the second half of the 20th Century. All of those opposing ideologies sought to enslave and subjugate mankind, and it was our duty as liberty-loving Americans to oppose them. But World War I? Like so many earlier European wars, it all seemed to be about imperialism and plundering the resources of other nations. From that viewpoint, there was little to choose from between the nations on either side; some were more authoritarian than others, but none really were "our" kind of people. No wonder that Americans had no desire to get involved in the war.
Both sets of alliances seemed to think that they would win quickly and easily over their enemies, and that they would get rich plunder from their victory. They miscalculated horribly; they didn't understand just how deadly modern machine guns were, and how other deadly new technology (tanks, aircraft, poison gas) would increase the casualties exponentially from earlier wars. Instead of a quick victory, they had a long, bloody stalemate, a meatgrinder trench war into which they fed the flower of a generation, with tragic results. The end result was that the war that European states fought for imperial gain led to the downfall of those empires in the ensuing decades, and the eclipse of European power by the rise of America and the Soviet Union.
"The Black Knight Always Triumphs!"
I'll go out on a limb and say that this guy is in serious trouble:
Armless, One-Legged Driver Leads ChaseA one-legged guy kicking an FHP trooper? Sounds like a punchline to a bad joke. I wonder if he fell down after doing it? It kind of reminds me of the bit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail where Arthur chops off the Black Knight's arms and legs and the Black Knight yells at him as he leaves, "Oh. Oh, I see. Running away, eh? You yellow bastards! Come back here and take what's coming to you. I'll bite your legs off!"
NEW PORT RICHEY, Fla. - Authorities were led on a high speed vehicle chase by an armless, one-legged man, and they said this wasn't the first time the 40-year-old eluded police.
Michael Francis Wiley taught himself to driver after losing both arms and a leg in an electrical accident when he was 13. He spent time in prison for kicking a Florida Highway Patrol trooper after an accident in 1996. He led police on a 120 mph chase in 1998.
5.14.2007
More About Next
I finished the book over the weekend. As a novel, it was okay. The bad guys got their comeuppance in the end; well, at least some of them did. But the world continues to spin, and the underlying problems that drove the novel's plot aren't really solved, and indeed appear to likely be insoluble.
In the author's notes at the end, Michael Crichton lists his five conclusions:
1. Stop patenting genes. He says that there is plenty of evidence that this is "unnecessary, unwise, and harmful." He mentions that it is bad public policy that hurts patient care and suppresses research.
2. Establish clear guidelines for the use of human tissues. There is insufficient legislation regarding the ownership of tissues donated for research purposes, which may harm the rights of patients.
3. Pass laws to ensure that data about gene testing is made public. Currently, the FDA cannot publish adverse results from gene therapy trials, allowing researchers to suppress information about patient deaths, claiming that such deaths are a trade secret.
4. Avoid bans on research. Banning research doesn't work; it just drives it underground and prevents proper oversight.
5. Rescind the Bayh-Dole Act. "In 1980, Congress decided that the discoveries made within universities were not being made widely available, to benefit the public. To move things along, it passed a law permitting university researchers to sell their discoveries for their own profit, even when that research had been funded by taxpayer money."
This has resulted in most science professors having corporate ties, which has paradoxically resulted in universities becoming more commercially focused. Crichton argues that this may benefit the universities and the corporations, but it doesn't benefit the public which underwrites much of the costs of the university system.
I won't write any spoilers about the plot, since you might want to read the book yourself. I will say that the ideas behind the novel are thought-provoking and disturbing. And that the scariest sentence in the book is the one-sentence preface:
"This novel is fiction, except for the parts that aren't."
In the author's notes at the end, Michael Crichton lists his five conclusions:
1. Stop patenting genes. He says that there is plenty of evidence that this is "unnecessary, unwise, and harmful." He mentions that it is bad public policy that hurts patient care and suppresses research.
2. Establish clear guidelines for the use of human tissues. There is insufficient legislation regarding the ownership of tissues donated for research purposes, which may harm the rights of patients.
3. Pass laws to ensure that data about gene testing is made public. Currently, the FDA cannot publish adverse results from gene therapy trials, allowing researchers to suppress information about patient deaths, claiming that such deaths are a trade secret.
4. Avoid bans on research. Banning research doesn't work; it just drives it underground and prevents proper oversight.
5. Rescind the Bayh-Dole Act. "In 1980, Congress decided that the discoveries made within universities were not being made widely available, to benefit the public. To move things along, it passed a law permitting university researchers to sell their discoveries for their own profit, even when that research had been funded by taxpayer money."
This has resulted in most science professors having corporate ties, which has paradoxically resulted in universities becoming more commercially focused. Crichton argues that this may benefit the universities and the corporations, but it doesn't benefit the public which underwrites much of the costs of the university system.
I won't write any spoilers about the plot, since you might want to read the book yourself. I will say that the ideas behind the novel are thought-provoking and disturbing. And that the scariest sentence in the book is the one-sentence preface:
"This novel is fiction, except for the parts that aren't."
Ten Pounds of Stupid in a Five-Pound Bag
Really. Really. Stupid.
Teachers stage fake gunman attack on sixth graders
Teachers stage fake gunman attack on sixth graders
MURFREESBORO, Tennessee (AP) -- Staff members of an elementary school staged a fictitious gun attack on students during a class trip, telling them it was not a drill as the children cried and hid under tables.Somewhere in Tennessee, a school of lawyers is sharpening their teeth and starting to circle. The parents are justifiably outraged at the teachers scaring the crap out of their kids. A "what would you do?" thought exercise in class is appropriate. This clearly was not.
5.12.2007
Smoked
That huge fire in Georgia and north Florida has put off huge amounts of smoke that have blown southward across the state of Florida. Our air quality has been lousy the last couple of days, and won't get better until a cold front comes through on Monday. I went out to lunch with my dad today at Lee Roy Selmon's restaurant in Fort Myers, and noticed that the whole area is covered with a smoky haze. It wasn't really heavy, but it was noticeable. Our air quality is usually pretty good, which makes it easy to tell when it isn't.
Lunch was pretty good. I had pulled pork with the house barbecue sauce, french fries and a Sam Adams seasonal beer, which I think was Summer Wheat, and it was pretty good. Dad had a burger with bleu cheese, which he wasn't impressed with; it was okay but not great.
Lee Roy Selmon's is a chain restaurant out of Tampa, and this location just opened last month, which was why I suggested we try it out. It's within a stone's throw of Smoky Bones, another barbecue/sports bar. The server was friendly and attentive and did a good job. The restaurant itself seemed kind of cramped, with only very narrow walkways between the tables. It was also kind of dimly lit, and it took my eyes a few moments to adjust to the low light to read the menu. I think I got more pulled pork than I would have at Smoky Bones, but it only came with one side dish at Lee Roy Selmon's, where at Smoky Bones it comes with two sides and a slice of Texas toast. Lee Roy Selmon's does have other things besides barbecue, though.
Lunch was pretty good. I had pulled pork with the house barbecue sauce, french fries and a Sam Adams seasonal beer, which I think was Summer Wheat, and it was pretty good. Dad had a burger with bleu cheese, which he wasn't impressed with; it was okay but not great.
Lee Roy Selmon's is a chain restaurant out of Tampa, and this location just opened last month, which was why I suggested we try it out. It's within a stone's throw of Smoky Bones, another barbecue/sports bar. The server was friendly and attentive and did a good job. The restaurant itself seemed kind of cramped, with only very narrow walkways between the tables. It was also kind of dimly lit, and it took my eyes a few moments to adjust to the low light to read the menu. I think I got more pulled pork than I would have at Smoky Bones, but it only came with one side dish at Lee Roy Selmon's, where at Smoky Bones it comes with two sides and a slice of Texas toast. Lee Roy Selmon's does have other things besides barbecue, though.
5.10.2007
New Tunes
The latest iteration of tunes on my iPod now includes a couple of new double-CD greatest hits collections which came in the mail yesterday from Amazon.com. First, I added Jimmy Buffett's Meet Me In Margaritaville, which has 38 songs covering most of his career, although it doesn't have his latest hit, "It's Five O'Clock Somewhere." Second, I added my favorite pop guilty pleasure: ABBA's The Definitive Collection, which has 37 tracks and is, indeed, definitive; all of their hits from 1972-1982 are there. Say what you will, the Swedish quartet knew how to deftly craft a pop song. And I always thought that Agnetha Faltskog (the blonde) was hot. I actually had one of her solo albums on cassette (Wrap Your Arms Around Me from 1983; my favorite song off the album was "Once Burned, Twice Shy," and it's the only one I really remember now). It may still be around here someplace, but I don't have a cassette player any more, and after twenty-some years, it probably wouldn't play anyway. Embrace the entropy.
5.09.2007
Next
I'm currently reading Michael Crichton's novel Next, which came out last November. I found it among the new books at the library when I returned some books on Saturday. If you click on the link, you can read the Amazon.com reviews of the book, as well as the publisher's blurb. So far, it's an interesting and thought-provoking book about the ways that genetic engineering is changing our lives and our society, ways that most of us are aware of only dimly if at all. I may write an update on this post when I finish the book.
5.08.2007
Signs of the Apocalypse
Things I saw in the last twelve hours:
While sitting at a stop light last night on the way to work behind an SUV, I noted the fact that the word "Sequoia" uses each of the vowels in the English language exactly once. How many other words can you say that about?
Spotted in the mail: A real estate advertisement for a condo in Washington, D.C.: 1350 square feet, asking $609,000. It had pictures and a description, along with the six-word disclaimer "Information deemed reliable, but not guaranteed." Yup, that's Washington alright!
Spotted at the store while grocery shopping this morning: Singing toothbrushes. Yes, the toothbrushes have a song built into them, so you can brush along to your favorite singer. Among the choices: The Village People singing "Y.M.C.A." No, I'm not kidding.
While sitting at a stop light last night on the way to work behind an SUV, I noted the fact that the word "Sequoia" uses each of the vowels in the English language exactly once. How many other words can you say that about?
Spotted in the mail: A real estate advertisement for a condo in Washington, D.C.: 1350 square feet, asking $609,000. It had pictures and a description, along with the six-word disclaimer "Information deemed reliable, but not guaranteed." Yup, that's Washington alright!
Spotted at the store while grocery shopping this morning: Singing toothbrushes. Yes, the toothbrushes have a song built into them, so you can brush along to your favorite singer. Among the choices: The Village People singing "Y.M.C.A." No, I'm not kidding.
5.07.2007
A Former Kansan Looks At Greensburg
When I saw the devastation wreaked by the EF-5 tornado on what was the small town of Greensburg, Kansas, I was struck by the power of nature. The twister was more than a mile wide and left a 22-mile long path of destruction. The damage looked a lot like a town that had suffered a direct hit from a hurricane. It looked a lot like coastal Mississippi after Katrina, with everything reduced to huge piles of rubble. The 200-mile-per-hour winds demolished more than 90% of the town's structures, including brick buildings. Businesses, churches, schools, all gone. One of the few surviving structures was the town's only bar. Tell me God doesn't have a weird sense of humor.
Tornadoes are the biggest natural disaster risk for most people living on the Great Plains. Of course, no matter where you live, there is some kind of risk: Hurricanes if you live near the Atlantic or Gulf Coasts, earthquakes along the Mississippi River and the Pacific Coast, and volcanic eruptions on the latter as well. Floods along any river or lake. Forest fires, landslides, sinkholes, blizzards... It's always something. And if you live somewhere long enough, you'll see your local hazards pop up. If you're lucky, you'll just get minor damage. If you're really unlucky, like those poor people in Greensburg, you'll be starting over from scratch, hopefully with a big insurance payout. If I lived there, with my home and livelihood gone, I'd be thinking seriously about relocating once I got my insurance check. Just as with New Orleans, sometimes the struggle to rebuild isn't worth the effort it will take for most people.
Tornadoes are the biggest natural disaster risk for most people living on the Great Plains. Of course, no matter where you live, there is some kind of risk: Hurricanes if you live near the Atlantic or Gulf Coasts, earthquakes along the Mississippi River and the Pacific Coast, and volcanic eruptions on the latter as well. Floods along any river or lake. Forest fires, landslides, sinkholes, blizzards... It's always something. And if you live somewhere long enough, you'll see your local hazards pop up. If you're lucky, you'll just get minor damage. If you're really unlucky, like those poor people in Greensburg, you'll be starting over from scratch, hopefully with a big insurance payout. If I lived there, with my home and livelihood gone, I'd be thinking seriously about relocating once I got my insurance check. Just as with New Orleans, sometimes the struggle to rebuild isn't worth the effort it will take for most people.
We'll Always Have Paris
Two stories, one weekend: Paris Hilton's going to the slammer for 45 days, and Nicolas Sarkozy wins the French presidential election.
As far as Ms. Hilton's travails go, I'm ambivalent. On the one hand, she seems like an affable, if air-headed, person. On the other, she broke the law, and nobody should be above the law, including wealthy celebutantes. Her mother's goofy antics in the courtroom didn't help; the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, and Mama Hilton apparently is no Rhodes scholar either. I suspect that Paris' confinement, which will be in isolation from the rest of the prisoners for her own safety, will be a learning experience. Then again, maybe not, if The Simple Life was any indication of her learning ability.
I read a very interesting article by Michel Gurfinkiel about France's problems, which seem intractable. Mr. Sarkozy seems to have his work cut out for him, and he will still have the old government bureacracy (which like all bureaucracies is resistant to change), which may make implementing reforms difficult. It will be nice having a French president whose default position isn't knee-jerk anti-Americanism. I may even have to reconsider my boycott of French products.
5.05.2007
Jamestown and the Queen
Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain is visiting the United States, with her visit timed to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent British colony in North America. Like most Americans, I hold no brief for the monarchy, but I do have a fondness for my cousins across the Atlantic. Queen Elizabeth visited Jamestown fifty years ago; I wonder if at that time she could have imagined returning as an 81-year-old. One thing's for sure: She's unlikely to still be around for the 450th anniversary, although it surely would frost Prince Charles if she was, since he's been sitting around waiting longer than the Maytag repairman. His mum will be one of the longest-serving monarchs in British history; Charles' reign will almost certainly be much shorter.
This month's issue of National Geographic magazine has an article about the founding of Jamestown and the hardships those first colonists went through. Unlike the Massachusetts Bay colonists who arrived in family groups thirteen years later on the Mayflower, the men who founded Jamestown were mostly adventurers looking to get rich quickly by prospecting for gold and silver. For most, it was a vain hope, with mortality rates around 75% between 1607 and 1624. Diseases caused by bad water and a lack of knowledge about sanitation probably were the main culprits; hunger and warfare with the natives also were contributing factors. And of course, Virginia didn't have rich supplies of precious metals. It was, however, a good place to grow tobacco, which was brought in from the West Indies.
Today the Queen will be attending the Kentucky Derby. And of course, it's also Cinco de Mayo. So, what are you drinking? Mint julep or Jose Cuervo? You'd probably be wise to stick to one or the other; mixing drinks can make you sick.
This month's issue of National Geographic magazine has an article about the founding of Jamestown and the hardships those first colonists went through. Unlike the Massachusetts Bay colonists who arrived in family groups thirteen years later on the Mayflower, the men who founded Jamestown were mostly adventurers looking to get rich quickly by prospecting for gold and silver. For most, it was a vain hope, with mortality rates around 75% between 1607 and 1624. Diseases caused by bad water and a lack of knowledge about sanitation probably were the main culprits; hunger and warfare with the natives also were contributing factors. And of course, Virginia didn't have rich supplies of precious metals. It was, however, a good place to grow tobacco, which was brought in from the West Indies.
Today the Queen will be attending the Kentucky Derby. And of course, it's also Cinco de Mayo. So, what are you drinking? Mint julep or Jose Cuervo? You'd probably be wise to stick to one or the other; mixing drinks can make you sick.
5.02.2007
O Mullah, Where Art Thou?
The mad mullahs in Iran don't just want to nuke Jews and Americans. They don't like porn, either:
IRAN: PORNOGRAPHY PRODUCERS TO GET DEATH PENALTY UNDER NEW LAWDang! And I was so looking forward to seeing movies like Hairy Persian Kitties, Burqa Bukkake Babes and Zohre Does Qom. I suppose the only good thing about this story is that it shows that even after almost thirty years of being ruled by religious zealots, the Iranians still like porn. They're human after all.
Tehran, 30 April (AKI) - The culture committee of the Iranian parliament approved on Monday a bill sentencing to death producers of 'pornography', videos and films deemed vulgar by the country's censorship. The draft law will now go to parliament where it is expected to be approved by an ample majority. Amateur porn films have a properous market in Iran and can fetch up to 30 euros each.
The market, tolerated for a long time, became a nationwide issue earlier this year after a porn film of popular television actress, Zohre Mir Ebrahimi, having sex with her partner, was released.
5.01.2007
"Far" and "Old"
There are certain concepts that the human mind has a hard time comprehending, due to limitations in our perspective. I'll write about a couple of them today.
First, we don't like to dwell on distances on an interstellar (or even worse, intergalactic) scale, because they make us seem small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Last week, there was a news story about how the European space agency had discovered a new planet that was the most "earth-like" of any found to date. This planet orbits a relatively nearby red star that is about 120 trillion miles away from us. Read that number again: 120 trillion miles. That's about 20.5 light years away. A light year is the distance that it takes light to travel in one year at 186, 282 miles per second. The light from that star now reaching our telescopes started in 1986. Indeed, when you look at the night sky, all of the light from the stars that you see originated years ago; even the closest nearby stars are more than 4 light years away. Many of the stars you see are much farther away; you may be looking at starlight that originated hundreds or even thousands of years ago. And of course, you may be looking at stars that are no longer there at all; when we see the light from a star "going nova", we are seeing light from a star that died many years ago.
Another concept that we can only feel around the edges is time. Not just the current hour and minute, but deep time, distant time, time far beyond that of a human lifespan. My grandmother turned 90 years old a couple of days ago. That seems like a very long time, and on the human scale, it is. Most people don't live that long, so anything that happened 90 years ago is very long ago indeed.
I grew up in St. Joseph, Missouri, and the Kansas City metropolitan area. Those cities were settled in the mid-1800s, so anything that was from that time seemed "old" to me. Then, when I went in the Army, I went to Massachusetts for a training school. I spent some time playing tourist in Boston, a city that was 350 years old or so, and that seemed very old. I prowled the historic sites, looked at the worn tombstones in the old cemeteries, visited Paul Revere's house and the Old North Church and Bunker Hill, and I thought I had a grasp of what "old" really was. Then, for my first duty assignment, I went to Augsburg, Germany -- A city that was founded by the Romans in 15 B.C. All of a sudden, my point of reference for "old" was again recalibrated. When I visited Rome a few years later, walked through the ruins of the Forum and the Colosseum, and then went and saw the ruins of Pompeii, I once again had to reassess what "old" really was. And visits to the Egyptian Museum in Berlin and last year's trip to Fort Lauderdale to see the Treasures of Tutankhamen exhibition just pushed "old" back a little farther.
But even those ancient things were only a few thousand years old. Every day, however, we walk around on a planet that has been here for over four billion years. The land where you are sitting hasn't been here that long, of course. It's almost certain that at some point in the past several million years, it was under the ocean, and at some point in the next several million years, it will almost certainly be again. The continental plates drift and shift and bump into each other. Mountain ranges are pushed up and then worn away by the forces of erosion. Ice sheets form and melt away as the climate cools and warms. This has happened for eons and will continue to do so. We have the illusion that we exist in stasis, that things are as they always have been and as they always should remain. This is, of course, only an illusion. But we can only really comprehend the kind of changes that take place within a human lifespan. Years, even decades, we understand. Centuries, millenia... We don't. Our existence is too brief for that to happen. And it's uncomfortable to think about how ephemeral and inconsequential that existence really is. A hundred years from now, will anyone remember anything that you or I have accomplished? Or will it be like the Shelley poem: "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair."
First, we don't like to dwell on distances on an interstellar (or even worse, intergalactic) scale, because they make us seem small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Last week, there was a news story about how the European space agency had discovered a new planet that was the most "earth-like" of any found to date. This planet orbits a relatively nearby red star that is about 120 trillion miles away from us. Read that number again: 120 trillion miles. That's about 20.5 light years away. A light year is the distance that it takes light to travel in one year at 186, 282 miles per second. The light from that star now reaching our telescopes started in 1986. Indeed, when you look at the night sky, all of the light from the stars that you see originated years ago; even the closest nearby stars are more than 4 light years away. Many of the stars you see are much farther away; you may be looking at starlight that originated hundreds or even thousands of years ago. And of course, you may be looking at stars that are no longer there at all; when we see the light from a star "going nova", we are seeing light from a star that died many years ago.
Another concept that we can only feel around the edges is time. Not just the current hour and minute, but deep time, distant time, time far beyond that of a human lifespan. My grandmother turned 90 years old a couple of days ago. That seems like a very long time, and on the human scale, it is. Most people don't live that long, so anything that happened 90 years ago is very long ago indeed.
I grew up in St. Joseph, Missouri, and the Kansas City metropolitan area. Those cities were settled in the mid-1800s, so anything that was from that time seemed "old" to me. Then, when I went in the Army, I went to Massachusetts for a training school. I spent some time playing tourist in Boston, a city that was 350 years old or so, and that seemed very old. I prowled the historic sites, looked at the worn tombstones in the old cemeteries, visited Paul Revere's house and the Old North Church and Bunker Hill, and I thought I had a grasp of what "old" really was. Then, for my first duty assignment, I went to Augsburg, Germany -- A city that was founded by the Romans in 15 B.C. All of a sudden, my point of reference for "old" was again recalibrated. When I visited Rome a few years later, walked through the ruins of the Forum and the Colosseum, and then went and saw the ruins of Pompeii, I once again had to reassess what "old" really was. And visits to the Egyptian Museum in Berlin and last year's trip to Fort Lauderdale to see the Treasures of Tutankhamen exhibition just pushed "old" back a little farther.
But even those ancient things were only a few thousand years old. Every day, however, we walk around on a planet that has been here for over four billion years. The land where you are sitting hasn't been here that long, of course. It's almost certain that at some point in the past several million years, it was under the ocean, and at some point in the next several million years, it will almost certainly be again. The continental plates drift and shift and bump into each other. Mountain ranges are pushed up and then worn away by the forces of erosion. Ice sheets form and melt away as the climate cools and warms. This has happened for eons and will continue to do so. We have the illusion that we exist in stasis, that things are as they always have been and as they always should remain. This is, of course, only an illusion. But we can only really comprehend the kind of changes that take place within a human lifespan. Years, even decades, we understand. Centuries, millenia... We don't. Our existence is too brief for that to happen. And it's uncomfortable to think about how ephemeral and inconsequential that existence really is. A hundred years from now, will anyone remember anything that you or I have accomplished? Or will it be like the Shelley poem: "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair."
4.30.2007
Back to the Grind
All good things must end, including vacations, and so today it was back to work. I was fairly well-rested and could feel the absence of stress when I got to work. In retrospect, I realized that I had felt moderately stressed before going on vacation. But it seemed that today was going to be a pretty good day, at least if you define "a pretty good day" as one in which a person has no desire to throttle anyone else.
That lasted for all of half a day. Alas, the restorative powers of a short vacation do nothing when it comes to dealing with the human foibles of others. The throttling desire returned, although somewhat mutedly compared to a couple of weeks ago. My hands did twitch a bit a couple of times, though. I must work on controlling my reflexes better.
That lasted for all of half a day. Alas, the restorative powers of a short vacation do nothing when it comes to dealing with the human foibles of others. The throttling desire returned, although somewhat mutedly compared to a couple of weeks ago. My hands did twitch a bit a couple of times, though. I must work on controlling my reflexes better.
4.27.2007
Slackin'
I've been off this week and feeling lazy.
Sure, I could have written about Sheryl Crow's goofy suggestion of allowing people one square of toilet paper per sitting, but she's been the butt of enough jokes elsewhere. No need for me to crack wise about it.
I could have written about the bizarre Phil Spector, who is on trial for murder and is looking like a latter-day Nigel Tufnel (Spinal Tap reference!) after his makeover. But hey, who really cares other than Spector, the victim's family and friends, and the tabloid media?
I could even have written about last night's Democratic presidential candidate debate in South Carolina... But again, who really cares other than the candidates, their victims' families and friends, and the tabloid media? Well, as early as they are out "candidating", since it's still more than NINE MONTHS until the first 2008 presidential primaries, you could make a pretty good case that we're ALL their victims! And that goes for the Republican candidates, too.
Funniest comment I've read about the Democratic candidates: "President Gravel? Only in an episode of The Flintstones."
Sure, I could have written about Sheryl Crow's goofy suggestion of allowing people one square of toilet paper per sitting, but she's been the butt of enough jokes elsewhere. No need for me to crack wise about it.
I could have written about the bizarre Phil Spector, who is on trial for murder and is looking like a latter-day Nigel Tufnel (Spinal Tap reference!) after his makeover. But hey, who really cares other than Spector, the victim's family and friends, and the tabloid media?
I could even have written about last night's Democratic presidential candidate debate in South Carolina... But again, who really cares other than the candidates, their victims' families and friends, and the tabloid media? Well, as early as they are out "candidating", since it's still more than NINE MONTHS until the first 2008 presidential primaries, you could make a pretty good case that we're ALL their victims! And that goes for the Republican candidates, too.
Funniest comment I've read about the Democratic candidates: "President Gravel? Only in an episode of The Flintstones."
4.21.2007
Secret Message?
Yesterday was April 20th, or "4/20" in pot smoker lingo. I just saw video on Fox and Friends of marijuana smokers in Denver having a smoke-in at 4:20 p.m. local time. The police, predictably, were on hand to make arrests for drug possession.
Meanwhile, here is a picture of the jerseys that the Boston Red Sox were wearing in their 7-6 win over the New York Yankees. They wear the green jerseys during spring training for their game on St. Patrick's Day, but I wasn't aware that they wore them during the regular season. Green jerseys; 4/20. Coincidence or a secret message? Dude, I question the timing!
Meanwhile, here is a picture of the jerseys that the Boston Red Sox were wearing in their 7-6 win over the New York Yankees. They wear the green jerseys during spring training for their game on St. Patrick's Day, but I wasn't aware that they wore them during the regular season. Green jerseys; 4/20. Coincidence or a secret message? Dude, I question the timing!
4.20.2007
How Do You Keep a Moron In Suspense?
You've heard that old joke, of course. The answer is "I'll tell you tomorrow." Well, my friend Barbara did something like that to me, sending me an e-mail on Tuesday whose title said "DO NOT OPEN TIL 4/20/07," complete with a red priority exclamation point.
Now, I'm an "instant gratification" kind of person. I don't like to wait! But suddenly I was facing an ethical dilemma: While Barbara wouldn't know if I opened the e-mail before today, I would. Since she asked (well, TOLD) me to wait until today, I felt obligated to do so. And so I respected her request and didn't open the e-mail until I got home from work this morning, even though I was consumed with curiosity. It was not easy.
Anyway, the message told me to watch for a package arriving today (since I was inconveniently celebrating my birthday on Sunday). And sure enough, the UPS guy brought me a box with a couple of deep-dish Malnati's pizzas from Taste of Chicago. My mouth is watering already! Now that is a good friend, folks! And I've almost forgiven her for keeping me in suspense for 2-1/2 days. Almost.
Now, I'm an "instant gratification" kind of person. I don't like to wait! But suddenly I was facing an ethical dilemma: While Barbara wouldn't know if I opened the e-mail before today, I would. Since she asked (well, TOLD) me to wait until today, I felt obligated to do so. And so I respected her request and didn't open the e-mail until I got home from work this morning, even though I was consumed with curiosity. It was not easy.
Anyway, the message told me to watch for a package arriving today (since I was inconveniently celebrating my birthday on Sunday). And sure enough, the UPS guy brought me a box with a couple of deep-dish Malnati's pizzas from Taste of Chicago. My mouth is watering already! Now that is a good friend, folks! And I've almost forgiven her for keeping me in suspense for 2-1/2 days. Almost.
"Lighten Up and Get A Life!"
There's a lot of things about presidential candidate Sen. John McCain that rub me the wrong way, starting with his McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law. But I really liked his response to critics when he told them they needed to "lighten up and get a life."
Amen, brother! "Oh, he might have insulted the Iranians! We don't want the Iranians to be mad at us! Let's wring our hands!" Let's not. And the "Bomb Iran" parody goes all the way back to 1980, by the way. Those of us old enough to remember the Iran hostage crisis remember hearing it... And agreeing with it.
I heard what the wimps at MoveOn.org had to say about Senator McCain's comments, and my response to them was unprintable. When I heard his "lighten up and get a life" reply, my estimation of him went up a couple of notches. "Straight talk," indeed. We need to hear more of it.
Amen, brother! "Oh, he might have insulted the Iranians! We don't want the Iranians to be mad at us! Let's wring our hands!" Let's not. And the "Bomb Iran" parody goes all the way back to 1980, by the way. Those of us old enough to remember the Iran hostage crisis remember hearing it... And agreeing with it.
I heard what the wimps at MoveOn.org had to say about Senator McCain's comments, and my response to them was unprintable. When I heard his "lighten up and get a life" reply, my estimation of him went up a couple of notches. "Straight talk," indeed. We need to hear more of it.
4.18.2007
Talk About Coitus Interruptus!
A local NBC-2 television news story:
Also, it should be noted that the Jeep didn't lose control, the driver lost control over the Jeep. Don't blame inanimate objects when you screw up, folks.
And if you're drunk and feeling frisky, get a room! It'll be a lot cheaper than an emergency room visit would be.
Sex while driving brings DUI chargeOuch! They never put that part in the Penthouse letters! Later in the story, the woman denies that she was having sex with the driver at the time of the crash. However, she was found naked on the ground at the scene of the crash, which occurred around 1 a.m. And that is the sort of thing that could cause an already inebriated driver to lose control of the vehicle.
FORT MYERS BEACH: Authorities have charged a Fort Myers man with driving under the influence after an accident on March 29th that left his naked passenger lying on the side of the road.
A blood test revealed that Joe Conner, who was driving the Jeep, had a blood alcohol level of .22 - almost three times the legal limit.
The vehicle's passenger, Susan McBride, was thrown from the Jeep in the accident and suffered major injuries.
Arrest reports that were just released shed some light on why McBride may have been naked at the time of the accident.
Deputies say Conner told them McBride, "wanted to have sex and started to take her clothes off."
He went on to explain to authorities that the two were traveling down Estero Boulevard, "having sex at the time the vehicle lost control."
The Jeep hit three mailboxes and a guard rail before finally coming to rest in a ditch.
The arrest report also said McBride has permanent disfigurement on her face from scarring caused by the crash.
McBride's neighbor described her injuries in more detail.
"Thirty percent of her body was road burn. She had a severe concussion and contusions on the head, stitches and a broken rib," said Kathy Rivera.
Also, it should be noted that the Jeep didn't lose control, the driver lost control over the Jeep. Don't blame inanimate objects when you screw up, folks.
And if you're drunk and feeling frisky, get a room! It'll be a lot cheaper than an emergency room visit would be.
A Pet Peeve (or Two)
For Pete's sake, people, there is no such word as "efforting"! Effort is NOT A VERB!! Growl!
While I'm being peeved, I don't like it when a fantasy story set in another world starts giving characters English names like Martin, Amos and William. Or a French name like Guy, for that matter. If you're in a world where there is no England, then the characters don't speak English and shouldn't have English given names! It completely spoils the ambience and the suspension of disbelief required in good fiction. I guess the only good thing I can say is that none of the characters are named Christian. Yet. And yes, it's an old series that I'm just now discovering, but the first book was pretty good, but the author really annoyed me by doing this in the second book. I already bought the third and fourth books in the series, though, so I guess I'll have to read them to find out what happens next. But I'm not happy about it.
While I'm being peeved, I don't like it when a fantasy story set in another world starts giving characters English names like Martin, Amos and William. Or a French name like Guy, for that matter. If you're in a world where there is no England, then the characters don't speak English and shouldn't have English given names! It completely spoils the ambience and the suspension of disbelief required in good fiction. I guess the only good thing I can say is that none of the characters are named Christian. Yet. And yes, it's an old series that I'm just now discovering, but the first book was pretty good, but the author really annoyed me by doing this in the second book. I already bought the third and fourth books in the series, though, so I guess I'll have to read them to find out what happens next. But I'm not happy about it.
4.17.2007
Surviving the Unthinkable
I've been thinking about the horrific massacre at Virginia Tech yesterday, where some deranged idiot murdered 32 people and wounded 15 others before taking his own life. We will hear over the coming days about those murdered people, about promising lives cut short, about the sorrow felt by mourning families and friends. And we will wonder, "What would I have done under those circumstances?"
Now, it's kind of tough to second-guess those who were there, and many times the information originally given out is garbled, distorted, inaccurate or just plain wrong. But I heard that in at least one place, students were shot "execution-style," that is, lined up and shot in the back of the head. And when I hear that, and about the shooter moving methodically through the halls of the academic building, I wonder why there wasn't more resistance and why nobody tried to jump him. They had to have heard the shots coming toward them.
So I thought about this last night at work, and asked the question, "How do you survive a situation like that? What do you do if a gunman comes into your workplace or your school or the mall where you are shopping?" If you get to the point where you're lined up and waiting for the gunshot from behind you like a sheep led to the slaughter, you've screwed up, big-time.
First, DON'T PANIC! Panicking is the most likely thing to get you killed. If you hear gunshots nearby, the first thing you should do is get down on the ground, fast. This makes you less of a target. When you're on the ground, take a deep breath and take stock of your surroundings.
Second, DON'T FREEZE! Just as running around wildly in a panic can get you killed, so can freezing in fear. Don't count on the cops to save you. Don't count on the SWAT team. They may be able to respond within a few minutes, but you may be dead if you wait for them. The best thing you can do is...
GET OUT! Know where the emergency exits are around you. You don't want to be a hero if you don't have to, so the best thing you can do is get away from the situation. Low-crawl on the floor to the nearest emergency exit. If the gunshots are coming from that direction, then low-crawl to the next-nearest one. If the gunshots are coming from a hallway outside of your office and you have a window in the office, go out the window if you are on the first floor.
If you are on a higher floor, you'll have to decide if dropping to the ground from that floor will kill you. You can probably drop from a second or even third floor without taking too much damage. If there is anything around that might break your fall, cushions on a chair or couch, etc., drop those out first and try to land on them. If there are bushes below, try to land on them. If there's a ledge, try to walk out onto it, then bend down and grasp the ledge and swing over, and hang by your arms before dropping. This will lessen the distance you will fall and cut the amount of damage you will take when you hit the ground.
What about if you're on an upper floor? Then you can try barricading the door, as one roomful of students at Virginia Tech did. Look at the hinges on the door. If they are on your side of the door, then it will swing in and it can be barricaded with a heavy piece of furniture like a desk or a couch. If the hinges are on the other side of the door, then it will swing out and barricading it is a waste of time.
Finally, what do you do if there's nothing to barricade the door with? What if there's no way to escape? Then the best thing to do is to try to jump the gunman if you are with a group of people. Make sure that the lights are turned off so that the gunman's eyes have to adjust when entering the room. Look for anything that you can use as an improvised weapon. One possible tactic would be to have everyone remove their shoes and throw them at the gunman's head as he enters the room, in order to distract him, since his natural reaction will be to raise his hands to block the objects coming at his face. At that point, everyone should charge the gunman and knock him to the floor. The odds are that someone will be shot in the process, but he can't shoot everyone at once, and once he's on the ground, your greater numbers can neutralize him.
Remember that it's not a fair fight; he came at you with a gun, so anything you do to him is fair. Repeated kicks to the groin should immobilize him, and when you're taking off your shoes to use as missiles, be sure to pull out the laces to use as an improvised garrote. Have someone try to get behind him, loop the shoelace around his neck, and strangle him with it. Heavy leather bootlaces probably would work better than the cloth laces in an average pair of tennis shoes. You may not have anything else to use as a weapon, but shoes and shoelaces could do the trick in a pinch. Be prepared to improvise with whatever is at hand, and think outside the box about things that you can use to defend yourself.
Think about what you would do in that kind of a situation. It's unlikely that you'll ever have to do it, of course. But then again, it was unlikely that those murdered students ever would either. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and they didn't respond in a way that allowed them to survive. If they had done this mental exercise sometime in the past, perhaps they might have.
Now, it's kind of tough to second-guess those who were there, and many times the information originally given out is garbled, distorted, inaccurate or just plain wrong. But I heard that in at least one place, students were shot "execution-style," that is, lined up and shot in the back of the head. And when I hear that, and about the shooter moving methodically through the halls of the academic building, I wonder why there wasn't more resistance and why nobody tried to jump him. They had to have heard the shots coming toward them.
So I thought about this last night at work, and asked the question, "How do you survive a situation like that? What do you do if a gunman comes into your workplace or your school or the mall where you are shopping?" If you get to the point where you're lined up and waiting for the gunshot from behind you like a sheep led to the slaughter, you've screwed up, big-time.
First, DON'T PANIC! Panicking is the most likely thing to get you killed. If you hear gunshots nearby, the first thing you should do is get down on the ground, fast. This makes you less of a target. When you're on the ground, take a deep breath and take stock of your surroundings.
Second, DON'T FREEZE! Just as running around wildly in a panic can get you killed, so can freezing in fear. Don't count on the cops to save you. Don't count on the SWAT team. They may be able to respond within a few minutes, but you may be dead if you wait for them. The best thing you can do is...
GET OUT! Know where the emergency exits are around you. You don't want to be a hero if you don't have to, so the best thing you can do is get away from the situation. Low-crawl on the floor to the nearest emergency exit. If the gunshots are coming from that direction, then low-crawl to the next-nearest one. If the gunshots are coming from a hallway outside of your office and you have a window in the office, go out the window if you are on the first floor.
If you are on a higher floor, you'll have to decide if dropping to the ground from that floor will kill you. You can probably drop from a second or even third floor without taking too much damage. If there is anything around that might break your fall, cushions on a chair or couch, etc., drop those out first and try to land on them. If there are bushes below, try to land on them. If there's a ledge, try to walk out onto it, then bend down and grasp the ledge and swing over, and hang by your arms before dropping. This will lessen the distance you will fall and cut the amount of damage you will take when you hit the ground.
What about if you're on an upper floor? Then you can try barricading the door, as one roomful of students at Virginia Tech did. Look at the hinges on the door. If they are on your side of the door, then it will swing in and it can be barricaded with a heavy piece of furniture like a desk or a couch. If the hinges are on the other side of the door, then it will swing out and barricading it is a waste of time.
Finally, what do you do if there's nothing to barricade the door with? What if there's no way to escape? Then the best thing to do is to try to jump the gunman if you are with a group of people. Make sure that the lights are turned off so that the gunman's eyes have to adjust when entering the room. Look for anything that you can use as an improvised weapon. One possible tactic would be to have everyone remove their shoes and throw them at the gunman's head as he enters the room, in order to distract him, since his natural reaction will be to raise his hands to block the objects coming at his face. At that point, everyone should charge the gunman and knock him to the floor. The odds are that someone will be shot in the process, but he can't shoot everyone at once, and once he's on the ground, your greater numbers can neutralize him.
Remember that it's not a fair fight; he came at you with a gun, so anything you do to him is fair. Repeated kicks to the groin should immobilize him, and when you're taking off your shoes to use as missiles, be sure to pull out the laces to use as an improvised garrote. Have someone try to get behind him, loop the shoelace around his neck, and strangle him with it. Heavy leather bootlaces probably would work better than the cloth laces in an average pair of tennis shoes. You may not have anything else to use as a weapon, but shoes and shoelaces could do the trick in a pinch. Be prepared to improvise with whatever is at hand, and think outside the box about things that you can use to defend yourself.
Think about what you would do in that kind of a situation. It's unlikely that you'll ever have to do it, of course. But then again, it was unlikely that those murdered students ever would either. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and they didn't respond in a way that allowed them to survive. If they had done this mental exercise sometime in the past, perhaps they might have.
4.16.2007
Animal Story Farm, Part 3
Because, once again, some animal stories are more equal than others. From the London Daily Mail:
Now, I'd be skeptical about a story like this, except that they have a picture of Macavity getting off the bus:
I think the fish and chips shop should hire him as their spokescat.
Mystery cat takes regular bus to the shops
Bus drivers have nicknamed a white cat Macavity after it has started using the No 331 several mornings a week.
The feline, which has a purple collar, gets onto the busy Walsall to Wolverhampton bus at the same stop most mornings - he then jumps off at the next stop 400m down the road, near a fish and chip shop.
The cat was nicknamed Macavity after the mystery cat in T.S Elliot's poem. He gets on the bus in front of a row of 1950s semi-detached houses and jumps off at a row of shops down the road which include a fish and chip shop.
Now, I'd be skeptical about a story like this, except that they have a picture of Macavity getting off the bus:
I think the fish and chips shop should hire him as their spokescat.
4.15.2007
Non-Nappy-Headed Ho Dies
So on Thursday night, Don Imus is fired for his "nappy-headed hos" comment. And now, on Saturday, the world's most famous Ho, Don Ho, dies. Coincidence? Perhaps. But now both of the Dons' careers are sending up tiny bubbles. Aloha, Don!
Don't Be That Guy!
Jim Macdonald at Making Light:
And if you won't wear a seatbelt, at least make sure that you've signed an organ donor card. Because, y'know, if you're in a car wreck, you may not be needing them yourself any more.
Do you know how we can tell the difference between people who were wearing their seatbelts and those who weren’t, at the scene of an automobile accident? The ones who were wearing their seatbelts are standing around saying “This really sucks,” and the ones who weren’t are kinda just lying there.Read it. Read it all. And then buckle your seatbelt! I don't have so many readers that I can afford to lose any.
This is not to say that all unrestrained traffic accidents are fatals, or that seatbelted folks are invulnerable. But if you’re playing the odds….
And if you won't wear a seatbelt, at least make sure that you've signed an organ donor card. Because, y'know, if you're in a car wreck, you may not be needing them yourself any more.
4.13.2007
Free Speech? Eh, Not So Much
"...Unless it might possibly offend anyone in any way at any time. Then you're on your own." -- America (2007)
Or as The Clash noted in their song "Know Your Rights" (from their seminal album Combat Rock), "you have the right to free speech, as long as you're not dumb enough to actually try it." Oh, the "Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech," it says so right there in the Constitution, but your free speech rights will be abridged well below the federal level. If you say anything that anyone might find offensive, you will find yourself hounded from the public square, investigated, humiliated, and if you cross your fingers, rehabilitated. Know your rights. These are your rights. Welcome to America, 2007. "Put in your earplugs, put on your eyeshades, you know where to put the cork." (Tommy, the Who.)
Well, Imus lost the radio gig, too. No surprise, really. Media outlets are controversy-averse. Controversy is bad for business, bad for ad sales, bad for the bottom line. Bad for ratings? We'll never know in this case. One thing's for sure: The civil rights groups that were picketing CBS and threatening boycotts put the lie to the notion that blacks are impoverished in America. Obviously they have enough economic clout that CBS and its sponsors didn't wish to lose their business.
No Way to Start a Weekend
I was heading to the clock at the end of the day to clock out when somebody spotted me and told me that I'd been paged to the MDO's office. I had three minutes until it was time for me to clock out. I walked in and spotted the supervisor and asked what was up. I was then escorted into the back office where my partner was sitting. The supervisor apologetically told me that she had to conduct an investigative interview, which can lead to discipline. We were both mystified about what this might involve, but then she came out and told us that two trays of our 34102 mail in blue trays had been found in the spread area yesterday, at noon. Even worse, when they were found, the information was given to the MDO while he was in a meeting with the plant manager. The bigwigs had their eyes focused on us, and not in a friendly way.
She wanted to know why it hadn't been run, and when the last time I'd checked the spread area had been. I explained that I'd gone to pick up the blue tray mail for my other run at around 3 a.m., and I'd checked the 34102 GPC at that time, which was empty. We'd already run all of the mail in that GPC. The mail in the blue trays is local-originating and comes off the machines being run by Tour 3. They usually finish up before 1 a.m., and were long gone when I did my final check of the spread area. Therefore, no new blue trays should have appeared in the spread area after that time.
I told the supervisor that what probably happened is that someone found the mail mis-spread in with their trays of mail, and rather than walking all the way to my machine to give it to me, they just dumped it in the GPC in the spread area. I also pointed out that if they'd just inducted the mail into the UTS, instead of fooling around with spreading the mail by hand, it would have come to my machine and been run, instead of being mis-spread through human error. I know that I've found more than one tray of mis-spread mail in my GPC on occasion, and I've always taken it to the machine that was running that mail. Apparently not everyone is that conscientious.
My partner was livid about the whole thing. As he noted, it's stupid to hassle two of your hardest-working, most conscientious clerks about something that may not even have been their fault. There was no chain-of-custody on where those two trays came from.
It was pretty obvious that the supervisor didn't want to have to do the investigative interview, but that she was getting pressured from above. She was coy about who was doing the pressuring. I don't know why. I don't have any problem at all about talking it over with the MDO or even the plant manager himself. I know that I do a damn good job, as good a job as anyone in the plant, and I take pride in that. And I'm not intimidated by anyone, no matter what title they may wear. That's probably because I'm not bucking for any kind of promotion. If I was, I might be some kind of yes-man lackey myself. But that's not my style. Never has been. Never will be.
She wanted to know why it hadn't been run, and when the last time I'd checked the spread area had been. I explained that I'd gone to pick up the blue tray mail for my other run at around 3 a.m., and I'd checked the 34102 GPC at that time, which was empty. We'd already run all of the mail in that GPC. The mail in the blue trays is local-originating and comes off the machines being run by Tour 3. They usually finish up before 1 a.m., and were long gone when I did my final check of the spread area. Therefore, no new blue trays should have appeared in the spread area after that time.
I told the supervisor that what probably happened is that someone found the mail mis-spread in with their trays of mail, and rather than walking all the way to my machine to give it to me, they just dumped it in the GPC in the spread area. I also pointed out that if they'd just inducted the mail into the UTS, instead of fooling around with spreading the mail by hand, it would have come to my machine and been run, instead of being mis-spread through human error. I know that I've found more than one tray of mis-spread mail in my GPC on occasion, and I've always taken it to the machine that was running that mail. Apparently not everyone is that conscientious.
My partner was livid about the whole thing. As he noted, it's stupid to hassle two of your hardest-working, most conscientious clerks about something that may not even have been their fault. There was no chain-of-custody on where those two trays came from.
It was pretty obvious that the supervisor didn't want to have to do the investigative interview, but that she was getting pressured from above. She was coy about who was doing the pressuring. I don't know why. I don't have any problem at all about talking it over with the MDO or even the plant manager himself. I know that I do a damn good job, as good a job as anyone in the plant, and I take pride in that. And I'm not intimidated by anyone, no matter what title they may wear. That's probably because I'm not bucking for any kind of promotion. If I was, I might be some kind of yes-man lackey myself. But that's not my style. Never has been. Never will be.
4.12.2007
One Shoe Drops on Imus
The other shoe hangs by a shoelace. Last night, MSNBC announced that they will no longer simulcast Don Imus's radio show. Instead of suspending him for two weeks as they'd originally planned, they're pulling the plug entirely. And there are those at CBS, whose WFAN affiliate produces Imus's radio show, that want him gone as well. The tidal wave continues to rise.
I think Imus has made one huge mistake in the past few days: He hasn't gone into rehab. Remember the guy on the TV show (not one I watch, so I don't remember his name) who used a slur about gays to refer to a co-star on his show? Like many others who have gotten into trouble with drugs or alcohol or simply just saying something stupid, he went into rehab. Yes, nowadays just about any sin can be washed away in the Holy Light of Rehab. Hallelujah! Imus hasn't done that, and he probably should have.
Why is this so? Because while in the past, alcoholism and drug abuse were considered to be signs of personality flaws and moral degeneracy, today they are "illnesses," and those who suffer from them are considered to be victims who are not responsible for their behavior. When you look at it like that, then it's easy to hear someone say, "Hey, that was the booze/drugs talking! I'm not really like that! It was the disease! It's not my fault!" and think, "Well, golly, he's right! He's a victim, too, so we have to forgive him."
But Imus hasn't been astute enough to blame Demon Rum or Peruvian Marching Powder for his hurtful words. He hasn't humbled himself by going into one of those $1000-a-day rehab centers. He hasn't made himself a fellow victim, and therefore, he cannot be sympathized with or forgiven by those in our society who believe that only their fellow victims can be righteous.
So that's my advice for Imus: Go into rehab! Quickly, before the radio gig goes up in smoke as well.
I think Imus has made one huge mistake in the past few days: He hasn't gone into rehab. Remember the guy on the TV show (not one I watch, so I don't remember his name) who used a slur about gays to refer to a co-star on his show? Like many others who have gotten into trouble with drugs or alcohol or simply just saying something stupid, he went into rehab. Yes, nowadays just about any sin can be washed away in the Holy Light of Rehab. Hallelujah! Imus hasn't done that, and he probably should have.
Why is this so? Because while in the past, alcoholism and drug abuse were considered to be signs of personality flaws and moral degeneracy, today they are "illnesses," and those who suffer from them are considered to be victims who are not responsible for their behavior. When you look at it like that, then it's easy to hear someone say, "Hey, that was the booze/drugs talking! I'm not really like that! It was the disease! It's not my fault!" and think, "Well, golly, he's right! He's a victim, too, so we have to forgive him."
But Imus hasn't been astute enough to blame Demon Rum or Peruvian Marching Powder for his hurtful words. He hasn't humbled himself by going into one of those $1000-a-day rehab centers. He hasn't made himself a fellow victim, and therefore, he cannot be sympathized with or forgiven by those in our society who believe that only their fellow victims can be righteous.
So that's my advice for Imus: Go into rehab! Quickly, before the radio gig goes up in smoke as well.
4.11.2007
Just Once...
Is anyone else as sick and tired of the Don Imus Apology Tour as I am? I mean, Anna Nicole Smith-level sick and tired. Yeah, he said something on his radio show that he thought was humorous that most other people didn't find humorous at all. Then the Brotherhood and Sisterhood of the Perpetually Offended got ahold of it, and were, predictably, offended. You saw people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, both of whom have made racially offensive comments in the past, come out of the woodwork and demand that Imus be fired from his radio show. And then you saw Imus begin his apology tour, groveling to all and sundry.
Well, I think he owed those women basketball players from Rutgers an apology for what he said about them. But I don't think he needs to lick the polish off Al Sharpton's shoes, or Jesse Jackson's, or Hillary Clinton's, or those of anyone else weighing in on the matter. He's gotten suspended for two weeks, for saying something far more offensive than what got Rush Limbaugh canned from Monday Night Football several years ago. But Imus's show has been popular, and without Imus, there is no show. So he won't be fired, and if some sponsors bail on him, they'll be back after the heat is off in a month or two.
I'll tell you, though, just once, just ONCE, I'd like to see someone in the position that Imus is in "man up" and say, "Yeah, I said it, and I'm not sorry! I thought it was funny at the time. If you're offended, then grow a thicker skin! You don't have a constitutional right to go through life without being offended! If you don't like it, then don't listen to my show and don't buy the products from my show's sponsors. There are plenty of other people who will. I'm not going to kowtow to political correctness, and I'm not going to lick the polish off Al Sharpton's shoes!"
It'll never happen, though.
Well, I think he owed those women basketball players from Rutgers an apology for what he said about them. But I don't think he needs to lick the polish off Al Sharpton's shoes, or Jesse Jackson's, or Hillary Clinton's, or those of anyone else weighing in on the matter. He's gotten suspended for two weeks, for saying something far more offensive than what got Rush Limbaugh canned from Monday Night Football several years ago. But Imus's show has been popular, and without Imus, there is no show. So he won't be fired, and if some sponsors bail on him, they'll be back after the heat is off in a month or two.
I'll tell you, though, just once, just ONCE, I'd like to see someone in the position that Imus is in "man up" and say, "Yeah, I said it, and I'm not sorry! I thought it was funny at the time. If you're offended, then grow a thicker skin! You don't have a constitutional right to go through life without being offended! If you don't like it, then don't listen to my show and don't buy the products from my show's sponsors. There are plenty of other people who will. I'm not going to kowtow to political correctness, and I'm not going to lick the polish off Al Sharpton's shoes!"
It'll never happen, though.
4.10.2007
Spotted in the Mail
Last night, I saw a rather humorous large advertising postcard. It was addressed to a guy locally. It had the word "EARTHQUAKE" in large jagged letters that were splitting apart in the center and warned that earthquake damage is not covered by standard homeowner's insurance. The other side showed a map of the U.S. with the level of danger on a rainbow scale from Red (High) through Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue and then finally the lowest level of danger, White. The entire state of Florida is White, except for the little bump at the northern end of the state that juts into Georgia, which is Blue.
So this company is sending this to a guy whose home is about as likely to be struck by a meteor as it is to suffer earthquake damage. I wonder if that same company sends warnings about hurricane damage not being covered by standard homeowner's policies to Montana and the Dakotas? I hope the guy who gets it has as good a laugh over it as I did.
Where is the Red? All along the Pacific Coast from Washington to California, plus southern Alaska and the Big Island of Hawaii, and the area where Missouri meets Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas around the New Madrid fault. If you live in any of those areas, make sure you keep your earthquake premiums current.
So this company is sending this to a guy whose home is about as likely to be struck by a meteor as it is to suffer earthquake damage. I wonder if that same company sends warnings about hurricane damage not being covered by standard homeowner's policies to Montana and the Dakotas? I hope the guy who gets it has as good a laugh over it as I did.
Where is the Red? All along the Pacific Coast from Washington to California, plus southern Alaska and the Big Island of Hawaii, and the area where Missouri meets Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas around the New Madrid fault. If you live in any of those areas, make sure you keep your earthquake premiums current.
4.09.2007
And While We're On the Subject...
I ripped a couple of comedy CDs to my iPod over the weekend. They were Have You Seen Me Lately and Leader of the Banned, both by the late Sam Kinison. Out of curiosity, I went to Wikipedia and looked up his entry and found that tomorrow, April 10th, is the 15th anniversary of his death. He was killed by a drunk driver, which was bitterly ironic considering that part of his shtick was making light of groups that opposed drunk driving. I still thought he was funny as hell.
So here's to you, Sam, wherever you may be spending your afterlife. Need I note that this may be NSFW? It's his video for "Wild Thing," featuring Aerosmith, Bon Jovi, Billy Idol and Slash, as well as Jessica Hahn. And if you're muttering, "Fifteen years? Has it really been that long?!" then you're probably old, like me. Likewise if you remember who Jessica Hahn was.
So here's to you, Sam, wherever you may be spending your afterlife. Need I note that this may be NSFW? It's his video for "Wild Thing," featuring Aerosmith, Bon Jovi, Billy Idol and Slash, as well as Jessica Hahn. And if you're muttering, "Fifteen years? Has it really been that long?!" then you're probably old, like me. Likewise if you remember who Jessica Hahn was.
Farewell, Johnny Hart
You might have seen that cartoonist Johnny Hart, who drew the "B.C." and "Wizard of Id" comic strips, passed away on Saturday at age 78. He had a stroke and died at his drawing board. It's the cartoonist's equivalent of dying with his boots on.
I don't read the comics every day, the way I used to when I was a kid. Maybe it's just that my view of the world has grown grimmer, although that might argue for reading the comics more, not less. My local paper didn't carry either of Hart's strips, although I read both of them growing up in St. Joseph, Mo., and Kansas City, and I usually found them to be humorous.
I have a lot of admiration for cartoonists, because they have a tough job: They have to be able to draw the same characters over and over, and they have to be able to come up with something clever for them to say every day. That's no small order. There are only so many jokes in the world. For someone to be able to do it day after day for almost fifty years like Hart did is really quite an accomplishment.
So farewell, Johnny Hart, and godspeed. Just as when Charles Schulz died a few years ago, Hart is irreplaceable. He was one of a kind, and the world will be a little less funny for his passing.
I don't read the comics every day, the way I used to when I was a kid. Maybe it's just that my view of the world has grown grimmer, although that might argue for reading the comics more, not less. My local paper didn't carry either of Hart's strips, although I read both of them growing up in St. Joseph, Mo., and Kansas City, and I usually found them to be humorous.
I have a lot of admiration for cartoonists, because they have a tough job: They have to be able to draw the same characters over and over, and they have to be able to come up with something clever for them to say every day. That's no small order. There are only so many jokes in the world. For someone to be able to do it day after day for almost fifty years like Hart did is really quite an accomplishment.
So farewell, Johnny Hart, and godspeed. Just as when Charles Schulz died a few years ago, Hart is irreplaceable. He was one of a kind, and the world will be a little less funny for his passing.
4.07.2007
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose
Fox News Channel mentioned this story the other day (well, rehashed it, actually, since the original FNC story is from late January) and I thought it was kind of interesting:
Porn Industry May Decide DVD Format War
The story notes that the American adult film industry's revenues in 2006 were over $12 billion, while mainstream American film's revenues were only around $9 billion. This tells you how much clout the adult film industry will have in deciding the battle between the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD high definition DVD formats, just as it did in making VHS the videotape format winner over Betamax.
This shouldn't be any surprise to anyone with a little knowledge of history. For any new technology, if there is a possible application for erotic gratification, then that will be one of the first applications. Photography and motion pictures are a couple of good examples. As soon as people had the ability to take pictures, they were taking racy pictures, and not just the soft core kind. Another good example is the electric vibrator, which was on the market nine years before the electric vacuum cleaner and ten years before the electric iron, according to the linked article.
There's something fascinating in looking at vintage black-and-white erotica from the past century or so. You get the feeling that however different their clothing, hairstyles and cultures may have been from ours, their essential human nature was just the same. The fellow in the top hat frolicking with the gal in the corset is not so far removed from us as we might have thought.
A number of the pictures I've seen are of French women from the 1920s, with short flapper hairstyles and outrageous costumes. Many of the pictures have flowery backgrounds or classical Grecian urns and columns as props. Perhaps the most essentially French one is a nude woman with dark hair and smoldering eyes and a cupid-bow mouth, wearing only an oversized beret and a scarf around her neck, left hand on her hip, right foot up on the seat of a chair, right elbow resting on her knee and a smoking cigarette extended from her fingertips. Another common trope is the gypsy, with scarves and beads and bangles, and sometimes even a tambourine (probably NSFW!).
But for artistic effect, my favorite would be this one (probably NSFW!). Giant peacock plumes! C'est parfait.
Porn Industry May Decide DVD Format War
The story notes that the American adult film industry's revenues in 2006 were over $12 billion, while mainstream American film's revenues were only around $9 billion. This tells you how much clout the adult film industry will have in deciding the battle between the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD high definition DVD formats, just as it did in making VHS the videotape format winner over Betamax.
This shouldn't be any surprise to anyone with a little knowledge of history. For any new technology, if there is a possible application for erotic gratification, then that will be one of the first applications. Photography and motion pictures are a couple of good examples. As soon as people had the ability to take pictures, they were taking racy pictures, and not just the soft core kind. Another good example is the electric vibrator, which was on the market nine years before the electric vacuum cleaner and ten years before the electric iron, according to the linked article.
There's something fascinating in looking at vintage black-and-white erotica from the past century or so. You get the feeling that however different their clothing, hairstyles and cultures may have been from ours, their essential human nature was just the same. The fellow in the top hat frolicking with the gal in the corset is not so far removed from us as we might have thought.
A number of the pictures I've seen are of French women from the 1920s, with short flapper hairstyles and outrageous costumes. Many of the pictures have flowery backgrounds or classical Grecian urns and columns as props. Perhaps the most essentially French one is a nude woman with dark hair and smoldering eyes and a cupid-bow mouth, wearing only an oversized beret and a scarf around her neck, left hand on her hip, right foot up on the seat of a chair, right elbow resting on her knee and a smoking cigarette extended from her fingertips. Another common trope is the gypsy, with scarves and beads and bangles, and sometimes even a tambourine (probably NSFW!).
But for artistic effect, my favorite would be this one (probably NSFW!). Giant peacock plumes! C'est parfait.
4.05.2007
Those Sneaky Swiss/French/New Englanders
I'm not really sure which of the above to blame for today's chocolate fiasco story. Perhaps any of them, perhaps all of them. Here's what happened: My friend Mary is also a chocolate aficionado, and after reading my recent blog post about chocolate, she wanted me to try the strongest dark chocolate that I described. I thought it was 86%, but it was actually 85%. Anyway, I wrote back to her that I could probably save myself the money and just write that it would be too bitter for my taste. But today, I was at the store and saw the Lindt Excellence collection, a sampler that showed Mint Intense, Orange Intense, 70% cacao dark chocolate and 85% cacao dark chocolate pieces on the package. "Okay," I thought, "I'll try them just so that Mary will be happy."
Well, I got home and opened up the package and found out that while there were several of each of the Mint Intense, Orange Intense and 70% cacao dark chocolate squares, there were NO 85% cacao pieces in the package AT ALL! I was not amused. Those weasels lied to me on their package! I don't know if it was the weaselly Swiss who own the company, the weaselly French who manufactured the chocolate or the weaselly New Hampshireans (New Hampshirites?) who packaged the chocolate here in America. Probably the latter, but we'll spread the blame liberally.
So, I'm sorry, Mary, but I still can't tell you anything about that 85% cacao dark chocolate. Although the 70% cacao is quite bitter. The orange and mint flavors are sweet enough to take some of the bite out of it in the other two kinds. I think I'll probably stick to milk chocolate for a while after this.
Well, I got home and opened up the package and found out that while there were several of each of the Mint Intense, Orange Intense and 70% cacao dark chocolate squares, there were NO 85% cacao pieces in the package AT ALL! I was not amused. Those weasels lied to me on their package! I don't know if it was the weaselly Swiss who own the company, the weaselly French who manufactured the chocolate or the weaselly New Hampshireans (New Hampshirites?) who packaged the chocolate here in America. Probably the latter, but we'll spread the blame liberally.
So, I'm sorry, Mary, but I still can't tell you anything about that 85% cacao dark chocolate. Although the 70% cacao is quite bitter. The orange and mint flavors are sweet enough to take some of the bite out of it in the other two kinds. I think I'll probably stick to milk chocolate for a while after this.
4.04.2007
Stop Me If You've Heard This One...
So, a coyote walks into a sandwich shop...
And he says, "Is your roadrunner fresh?"
The man behind the counter replies, "We don't serve your kind here. And we don't have roadrunner sandwiches."
The coyote sighs and says, "You've hurt my feelings. I'm going into rehab*, like everyone else."
* - "He was taken to the Flint Creek Rehabilitation Center in Barrington, home to all of Chicago's transplanted urban coyotes."
UPDATE: 04/05/2007 -- BETTER PUNCHLINE!
So, a coyote walks into a sandwich shop...
And he says, "Is your roadrunner fresh?"
The man behind the counter replies, "We don't serve your kind here. And we don't have roadrunner sandwiches."
The coyote howls and says, "Darn it! I should have known better than to trust that stupid Acme restaurant guidebook!"
And he says, "Is your roadrunner fresh?"
The man behind the counter replies, "We don't serve your kind here. And we don't have roadrunner sandwiches."
The coyote sighs and says, "You've hurt my feelings. I'm going into rehab*, like everyone else."
* - "He was taken to the Flint Creek Rehabilitation Center in Barrington, home to all of Chicago's transplanted urban coyotes."
UPDATE: 04/05/2007 -- BETTER PUNCHLINE!
So, a coyote walks into a sandwich shop...
And he says, "Is your roadrunner fresh?"
The man behind the counter replies, "We don't serve your kind here. And we don't have roadrunner sandwiches."
The coyote howls and says, "Darn it! I should have known better than to trust that stupid Acme restaurant guidebook!"
4.03.2007
Euro-cent Wise, Euro Foolish
I hope that wasn't lost in translation!
Okay, this story is from Novosti, the Russian news agency, and probably should be taken with a deer-lick-sized block of salt:
Belgium to impose tax on barbequing to fight global warming
Can you imagine what would happen if some American state tried pulling a similar stunt? The offending officials would no doubt be burned in effigy, although we don't know what kind of carbon tax will be required to do that in the future!
Okay, this story is from Novosti, the Russian news agency, and probably should be taken with a deer-lick-sized block of salt:
Belgium to impose tax on barbequing to fight global warming
BRUSSELS, April 3 (RIA Novosti) - The government of Belgium's French-speaking region of Wallonia, which has a population of about 4 million, has approved a tax on barbequing, local media reported.Now, the question: How much carbon dioxide will be emitted by the fleet of helicopters hovering over Wallonia, hoping to catch scofflaw grillers? I'll bet it's one hell of a lot more than the barbecue grills will be putting off! That's a hefty tax, by the way, since the current exchange rate is more than one dollar per euro.
Experts said that between 50 and 100 grams of CO2, a so-called greenhouse gas, is emitted during barbequing. Beginning June 2007, residents of Wallonia will have to pay 20 euros for a grilling session.
The local authorities plan to monitor compliance with the new tax legislation from helicopters, whose thermal sensors will detect burning grills.
Scientists believe CO2 emissions are a major cause of global warming.
Can you imagine what would happen if some American state tried pulling a similar stunt? The offending officials would no doubt be burned in effigy, although we don't know what kind of carbon tax will be required to do that in the future!
3.30.2007
Choco-Blogging
In the beginning, there was milk chocolate, and mankind saw that it was good.
Then came dark chocolate, and mankind saw that it was also good.
And then came premium high cacao dark chocolate, high in flavinoids, and mankind saw that not only was it good, it was healthy.
Finally, there came single origin premium chocolate, with beans from one specific location being used to make superior varieties of chocolate for the cognoscenti. And that is where we are today: Sampling the three varieties of single origin chocolate in the Hershey's Cacao Reserve Single Origin Collection.
The package contained 17 pieces of chocolate ("tasting squares"), 4.2 oz. In my package, there were five of the Java premium milk chocolate (37% cacao), five of the Arriba premium dark milk chocolate (50% cacao) and seven of the Sao Tome premium dark chocolate (70% cacao). I tried one of each, starting with the lightest and going to the darkest, as I would if sampling varieties of beer.
The Java milk chocolate uses a rare, hand-picked form of Criollo cacao beans from the Indonesian island of Java. This is very, very good chocolate, very smooth, creamy and sweet.
The Arriba dark milk chocolate uses "a native strain of Forastero cacao beans from the natural rainforest region of southern Ecuador." This is also very good, but more bittersweet than the milk chocolate.
The Sao Tome dark chocolate is made from Sao Tome Forastero cacao beans. Very dark and robust.
You can probably find the sampler package at your local supermarket, and the individual varieties can be bought as bars as well.
There also was a Hershey's "Whole Bean" chocolate bar which uses the whole cacao bean, is 40% lower in sugar than regular chocolate and as an added bonus, has fiber! Yes, not only will you get your healthy flavinoids, but it'll keep you regular as well.
There also was an 86% cacao bar from another company, Lindt. I think that I would be afraid to try a chocolate bar with that high of a cacao content, because it would probably be so bitter. I'm willing to go to great lengths for my readers, but that might be a bridge too far.
Then came dark chocolate, and mankind saw that it was also good.
And then came premium high cacao dark chocolate, high in flavinoids, and mankind saw that not only was it good, it was healthy.
Finally, there came single origin premium chocolate, with beans from one specific location being used to make superior varieties of chocolate for the cognoscenti. And that is where we are today: Sampling the three varieties of single origin chocolate in the Hershey's Cacao Reserve Single Origin Collection.
The package contained 17 pieces of chocolate ("tasting squares"), 4.2 oz. In my package, there were five of the Java premium milk chocolate (37% cacao), five of the Arriba premium dark milk chocolate (50% cacao) and seven of the Sao Tome premium dark chocolate (70% cacao). I tried one of each, starting with the lightest and going to the darkest, as I would if sampling varieties of beer.
The Java milk chocolate uses a rare, hand-picked form of Criollo cacao beans from the Indonesian island of Java. This is very, very good chocolate, very smooth, creamy and sweet.
The Arriba dark milk chocolate uses "a native strain of Forastero cacao beans from the natural rainforest region of southern Ecuador." This is also very good, but more bittersweet than the milk chocolate.
The Sao Tome dark chocolate is made from Sao Tome Forastero cacao beans. Very dark and robust.
You can probably find the sampler package at your local supermarket, and the individual varieties can be bought as bars as well.
There also was a Hershey's "Whole Bean" chocolate bar which uses the whole cacao bean, is 40% lower in sugar than regular chocolate and as an added bonus, has fiber! Yes, not only will you get your healthy flavinoids, but it'll keep you regular as well.
There also was an 86% cacao bar from another company, Lindt. I think that I would be afraid to try a chocolate bar with that high of a cacao content, because it would probably be so bitter. I'm willing to go to great lengths for my readers, but that might be a bridge too far.
3.28.2007
Animal Story Farm, Day 2
Because some animal stories are still more equal than others:
CUTE KNUT NOT KILLER!
Panda death stuns Berlin after polar bear euphoria
One wonders whether Yan Yan might be one of the panda porn stars who failed to get the attention of Chuang Chuang, the male panda in yesterday's story from Thailand. "Well, all she does is lay there!" the uninterested Chuang Chuang might have exclaimed. Well, if he could talk, he might have.
UPDATE: And how could I have missed this one?
NEW FASHION TREND!
Woman stopped wearing girdle of live crocodiles
CUTE KNUT NOT KILLER!
Panda death stuns Berlin after polar bear euphoria
BERLIN (Reuters) - Berlin Zoo denied media allegations on Tuesday that Knut the celebrity polar bear cub was responsible for the sudden demise of one of its older attractions, a 22-year-old panda who was found dead in her cage.When you spend most of your time lying on your back chomping bamboo shoots, everything else probably seems stressful.
Just four days after the euphoria over the debut of three-and-a-half-month-old "Cuddly Knut", the mysterious death of Chinese-born Yan Yan stole the headlines in Tuesday's German newspapers.
Top-selling Bild reported the influx of visitors to the zoo -- about 30,000 a day -- could have stressed the black and white bear, who spent much of her time lying on her back chomping at bamboo shoots.
One wonders whether Yan Yan might be one of the panda porn stars who failed to get the attention of Chuang Chuang, the male panda in yesterday's story from Thailand. "Well, all she does is lay there!" the uninterested Chuang Chuang might have exclaimed. Well, if he could talk, he might have.
UPDATE: And how could I have missed this one?
NEW FASHION TREND!
Woman stopped wearing girdle of live crocodiles
JERUSALEM (AP) -- A woman was caught with three crocodiles strapped to her waist at the Gaza-Egypt border crossing after guards noticed that she looked "strangely fat," officials said.I suppose her suicide bomber belt must have been at the cleaners...
The woman's odd shape raised suspicions at the Rafah terminal in southern Gaza, and a body search by a female border guard turned up the animals, each about 50 centimeters (20 inches) long, concealed underneath her loose robe, according to Maria Telleria, spokeswoman for the European observers who run the crossing.
"The woman looked strangely fat. Even though she was veiled and covered, even with so many clothes on there was something strange," Telleria said.
The incident, which took place on Thursday, sparked panic at the crossing.
"The policewoman screamed and ran out of the room, and then women began screaming and panicking when they heard," Telleria said. But when the hysteria died down, she said, "everybody was admiring a woman who is able to tie crocodiles to her body."
3.27.2007
Animal Story Farm
Where all animal stories are equal, but some are more equal than others:
PANDA PORN!
Zoo Hopes Porn Will Help Pandas Mate
GIANT TOAD!
Group Finds Toad the Size of a Small Dog
PANDA PORN!
Zoo Hopes Porn Will Help Pandas Mate
CHIANG MAI, Thailand - Chuang Chuang the panda has been spending his days in front of a big screen television watching panda porn.One wonders whether Thai panda porn has a 1970s-style boom-chicka-wow-wow soundtrack. Maybe instead of the hardcore panda porn, they should get some of those soft-core spring break videos from Bangkok: Pandas Gone Wild! Then maybe Chuang Chuang and Lin Hui can get their freak on.
Authorities at the Chiang Mai Zoo in northern Thailand hope the images will encourage him to mate with his partner, Lin Hui, and serve as an instructional lesson in how to do it right.
So far, it's been a tough sell, the zoo's chief veterinarian, Kanika Limtrakul, said Tuesday.
"Chuang Chuang seems indifferent to the videos; he has no reaction to what he's seeing on TV," Kanika said. "But, we're continuing to show him videos and hoping they will leave an impression."
GIANT TOAD!
Group Finds Toad the Size of a Small Dog
DARWIN, Australia - An environmental group said Tuesday it had captured a "monster" toad the size of a small dog.The cane toads are a nuisance exotic species and quite poisonous, so Frogwatch rounds them up, kills and detoxifies them and then mulches them for fertilizer. No word on whether Godzilla the toad will get the same treatment, although I suspect he will. Unlike Knut the polar bear cub in Berlin, the toad isn't cute and cuddly, so his mulching would cause little outrage in the world, outside of radical toad activists. You laugh, but there are probably some out there. Believe it.
With a body the size of a football and weighing nearly 2 pounds, the toad is among the largest specimens ever captured in Australia, according to Frogwatch coordinator Graeme Sawyer.
3.26.2007
Monday Stuff
Anna Nicole autopsy results to be released in a couple of hours: Please, PLEASE let it be "natural causes" so she can go away and rest in peace. But you know that's not going to happen.
Creepiest story from the weekend: The guy in Houston who strangled his ex-girlfriend and then dismembered and burned her body on two barbecue grills on his balcony. There are far too many tasteless comments possible for this story, but I'm going to pass and let you compose your own.
On the Iranians taking 15 British sailors and Royal Marines hostage: Man, I miss the days of the old British Empire! 150 years ago, the British would be flattening villages with gunboats until the wogs gave their people back. You get the feeling that Blair & Co. won't take the stern action that they should. Then again, the Iranians have been responsible for the IEDs killing our soldiers and Marines in Iraq, and we haven't done jack shit about it either. We've got about 28 years worth of payback waiting for the Iranians, if we ever get leaders with the balls to do it. It's too bad that Carter was so damn feckless in 1979. Bombing the hell out of Iran back then could have nipped the whole Islamist movement in the bud. Bombing the hell out them now probably is a good idea, anyway. "Pour encourager les autres", as the French say. The Romans had another good saying: "Oderint dum metuant," which means "Let them hate, so long as they fear." I don't care if other countries don't love us, but I'd just as soon that they be afraid of us, so that they don't kidnap or murder Americans. If you have a reputation for ruthlessness, of destroying cities and selling the survivors into slavery and sowing the fields with salt, people don't mess with you. Well, the slavery bit is outmoded, but parts one and three still work. Ask the folks in Carthage. They never messed with Rome again after they got the "Cartago delenda est" treatment.
Creepiest story from the weekend: The guy in Houston who strangled his ex-girlfriend and then dismembered and burned her body on two barbecue grills on his balcony. There are far too many tasteless comments possible for this story, but I'm going to pass and let you compose your own.
On the Iranians taking 15 British sailors and Royal Marines hostage: Man, I miss the days of the old British Empire! 150 years ago, the British would be flattening villages with gunboats until the wogs gave their people back. You get the feeling that Blair & Co. won't take the stern action that they should. Then again, the Iranians have been responsible for the IEDs killing our soldiers and Marines in Iraq, and we haven't done jack shit about it either. We've got about 28 years worth of payback waiting for the Iranians, if we ever get leaders with the balls to do it. It's too bad that Carter was so damn feckless in 1979. Bombing the hell out of Iran back then could have nipped the whole Islamist movement in the bud. Bombing the hell out them now probably is a good idea, anyway. "Pour encourager les autres", as the French say. The Romans had another good saying: "Oderint dum metuant," which means "Let them hate, so long as they fear." I don't care if other countries don't love us, but I'd just as soon that they be afraid of us, so that they don't kidnap or murder Americans. If you have a reputation for ruthlessness, of destroying cities and selling the survivors into slavery and sowing the fields with salt, people don't mess with you. Well, the slavery bit is outmoded, but parts one and three still work. Ask the folks in Carthage. They never messed with Rome again after they got the "Cartago delenda est" treatment.
3.23.2007
iPod Thoughts, Six Months On
I've had my iPod Nano for about six months now, and I still think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. I can carry more than 2000 songs, a week's worth of music if played continuously, in my front pocket. And of course, that's far more time than the battery life, which is good but does require me to recharge it every three days or so. The Nano is light as a feather, and it doesn't have a hard drive or any other moving parts, since it uses flash memory rather than a hard drive, like the larger video iPods do. I got the Nano rather than a video iPod because all I wanted it for was to carry music around to listen to at work. It succeeds admirably at this task.
So, is 2000 songs enough? Well, yes and no. It's more music than I can listen to, but it can't possibly include all of the music that I own. I do have to decide what's going to go on the iPod, and if I want to add something, then something else has to come off, since it's usually pretty close to full. I've found that I have two conflicting desires: I want to have my favorite CDs on the iPod in their entirety, but I also want to have all of my favorite individual songs. Ultimately, something's got to give. Sometimes, I put just the songs I want from a particular CD on the iPod and unselect the rest of the CD in iTunes. I did that yesterday when I ripped the Eurythmics' Revenge, putting just "Missionary Man," "Thorn In My Side" and "When Tomorrow Comes" on the iPod. Although, after listening to those songs last night at work, I may just put the rest of that CD on the iPod as well. I'd forgotten how good Annie Lennox sounded on those songs.
There are some songs that I put on the iPod last September that I haven't played at all yet. There are other songs that have play counts over 100. The iPod tracks the number of times each track has been played, and even compiles a nifty Top 25 playlist for you. It tends to become a self-reinforcing list, since it's often easy to just click that playlist and hear the songs you've listened to the most. When it comes time to remove something in order to put something new on the iPod, I've started by dropping the stuff I don't actually play. Yeah, it's nice to have every Beatles and Bruce Springsteen CD on the iPod, but when you haven't played Nebraska after six months, and you want to put something new on it...
I've only ripped about half of the CDs in my collection, and one of these days, I'll sit down and rip the rest, then fill in some of the gaps on the iPod. No ZZ Top! I have the CDs, I just haven't ripped them. No "No More Mr. Nice Guy" by Alice Cooper! I have that on CD, too, and it's my theme song. Well, one of them, anyway. A grievous oversight! Somebody should do something about that.
Next week, I'll take the time to write a post about my current Top 25, and how it has changed since the original Top 25 I wrote about last fall. Many of the same songs are still on the playlist; as I said, it tends to be self-reinforcing through sheer laziness. I'll also write about my most-played full CDs. The Bangles and Susanna Hoffs figure prominently on that list.
Yesterday, I added some new stuff. I ripped Joan Osborne's Relish from 1995, which had her hit song "One of Us," as well as some other songs I liked: "Right Hand Man" and "Let's Just Get Naked" were both pretty good. Several of the songs on the CD had a real Sheryl Crow feel to them, especially "Crazy Baby"; I got the feeling that either one of them could have sung some of the other's songs and the material would have felt authentic. So, if you're wondering, the song about "what if God was one of us" wasn't the only good one on the CD.
So, is 2000 songs enough? Well, yes and no. It's more music than I can listen to, but it can't possibly include all of the music that I own. I do have to decide what's going to go on the iPod, and if I want to add something, then something else has to come off, since it's usually pretty close to full. I've found that I have two conflicting desires: I want to have my favorite CDs on the iPod in their entirety, but I also want to have all of my favorite individual songs. Ultimately, something's got to give. Sometimes, I put just the songs I want from a particular CD on the iPod and unselect the rest of the CD in iTunes. I did that yesterday when I ripped the Eurythmics' Revenge, putting just "Missionary Man," "Thorn In My Side" and "When Tomorrow Comes" on the iPod. Although, after listening to those songs last night at work, I may just put the rest of that CD on the iPod as well. I'd forgotten how good Annie Lennox sounded on those songs.
There are some songs that I put on the iPod last September that I haven't played at all yet. There are other songs that have play counts over 100. The iPod tracks the number of times each track has been played, and even compiles a nifty Top 25 playlist for you. It tends to become a self-reinforcing list, since it's often easy to just click that playlist and hear the songs you've listened to the most. When it comes time to remove something in order to put something new on the iPod, I've started by dropping the stuff I don't actually play. Yeah, it's nice to have every Beatles and Bruce Springsteen CD on the iPod, but when you haven't played Nebraska after six months, and you want to put something new on it...
I've only ripped about half of the CDs in my collection, and one of these days, I'll sit down and rip the rest, then fill in some of the gaps on the iPod. No ZZ Top! I have the CDs, I just haven't ripped them. No "No More Mr. Nice Guy" by Alice Cooper! I have that on CD, too, and it's my theme song. Well, one of them, anyway. A grievous oversight! Somebody should do something about that.
Next week, I'll take the time to write a post about my current Top 25, and how it has changed since the original Top 25 I wrote about last fall. Many of the same songs are still on the playlist; as I said, it tends to be self-reinforcing through sheer laziness. I'll also write about my most-played full CDs. The Bangles and Susanna Hoffs figure prominently on that list.
Yesterday, I added some new stuff. I ripped Joan Osborne's Relish from 1995, which had her hit song "One of Us," as well as some other songs I liked: "Right Hand Man" and "Let's Just Get Naked" were both pretty good. Several of the songs on the CD had a real Sheryl Crow feel to them, especially "Crazy Baby"; I got the feeling that either one of them could have sung some of the other's songs and the material would have felt authentic. So, if you're wondering, the song about "what if God was one of us" wasn't the only good one on the CD.
3.22.2007
Something Odd
I was watching the local morning news at work the other day and a commercial came on for an FM radio station with the same call letters. A pop song played in the background while the video showed short clips of a young woman, then a woman passing a folder to another woman in a office, then a mom driving in her car with her young daughter, then a middle-aged woman. All were smiling as the voice-over told about how mellow the music on their station was. What was missing? Not a single male in the commercial, at all. Not even a wimpy, metrosexual one. It was pretty clear who their target demographic was. Then again, perhaps they realized who their audience was and that males in any age group probably were a lost cause, because they were listening to other stations (talk radio, sports talk, classic rock or country).
I'm just guessing, but I'd say that any guy who admits to listening to that particular station would probably be required to turn in his man-card, anyway.
I'm just guessing, but I'd say that any guy who admits to listening to that particular station would probably be required to turn in his man-card, anyway.
3.20.2007
Thoughts on Yesterday's Video
For those who are not familiar with the back story on that video, let me fill you in. The original ad was created by Apple for the 1984 Super Bowl. The only thing that was changed from the original was removing Big Brother's video and audio from the telescreen and replacing it with black-and-white video from Hillary Clinton. I thought it was a powerful ad that had an element of truth to it, which is necessary to make a parody work. I think it's fair to say that Senator Clinton's o'erweening ambition is no secret, and that almost all Republicans and not a few Democrats feel a sense of unease at the thought of her as President of the United States.
So what does the ad say about the state of politics in America in 2007? Well, it says that the Internet has changed political campaigns forever, for good or ill. No longer does a campaign ad require a professional ad agency to create the material or a television advertising time buy in order to disseminate the message. Instead, any reasonably intelligent person with some skill in video editing can create a video ad, and anyone with access to a YouTube account can then upload that video to the Internet. The gatekeepers no longer have control over the content or the dissemination of information. The Internet has been as revolutionary in breaking the monopoly of the Mainstream Media as Gutenberg's printing press was in breaking the religious monopoly of the Catholic Church, and this kind of ad shows the maturation of the process.
When I was growing up, the Mainstream Media had a complete monopoly on the information that the American people received. You had your choice of three television networks: ABC, CBS, NBC, which were ideologically as alike as peas in a pod. You had your local daily newspaper, and while there most likely was a morning paper and an evening paper, the odds were that they were both put out by the same publisher and thus were in ideological lockstep. Only if you lived in a really large city like New York or Chicago or Los Angeles were you likely to have different competitive newspapers vying for your attention. You could subscribe to weekly news magazines like Time or Newsweek, and if you were of a political bent, you could get something like The Nation or The Weekly Standard. If you were a real wonk, you could go to your local public library and read several-days-old out-of-town newspapers. And you could also read whatever you might find in that library or in bookstores. And that was the sum total of the information that was available to you.
Contrast that with today: I can read today's newspapers from across the country and around the world with a few mouse clicks. I can access more information with a Google search than I could have by going through the card catalogs and the periodicals at my local library when I was a kid. The sum total of mankind's knowledge is available to me, most of it for free or at most a nominal charge. And I can view videos of music or political commentary for only the cost of the time it takes me to download them. It is an exhilarating time to be alive.
So what does the ad say about the state of politics in America in 2007? Well, it says that the Internet has changed political campaigns forever, for good or ill. No longer does a campaign ad require a professional ad agency to create the material or a television advertising time buy in order to disseminate the message. Instead, any reasonably intelligent person with some skill in video editing can create a video ad, and anyone with access to a YouTube account can then upload that video to the Internet. The gatekeepers no longer have control over the content or the dissemination of information. The Internet has been as revolutionary in breaking the monopoly of the Mainstream Media as Gutenberg's printing press was in breaking the religious monopoly of the Catholic Church, and this kind of ad shows the maturation of the process.
When I was growing up, the Mainstream Media had a complete monopoly on the information that the American people received. You had your choice of three television networks: ABC, CBS, NBC, which were ideologically as alike as peas in a pod. You had your local daily newspaper, and while there most likely was a morning paper and an evening paper, the odds were that they were both put out by the same publisher and thus were in ideological lockstep. Only if you lived in a really large city like New York or Chicago or Los Angeles were you likely to have different competitive newspapers vying for your attention. You could subscribe to weekly news magazines like Time or Newsweek, and if you were of a political bent, you could get something like The Nation or The Weekly Standard. If you were a real wonk, you could go to your local public library and read several-days-old out-of-town newspapers. And you could also read whatever you might find in that library or in bookstores. And that was the sum total of the information that was available to you.
Contrast that with today: I can read today's newspapers from across the country and around the world with a few mouse clicks. I can access more information with a Google search than I could have by going through the card catalogs and the periodicals at my local library when I was a kid. The sum total of mankind's knowledge is available to me, most of it for free or at most a nominal charge. And I can view videos of music or political commentary for only the cost of the time it takes me to download them. It is an exhilarating time to be alive.
3.19.2007
Somewhere in Massachusetts...
John Kerry is watching this and wondering why he didn't use the concept in 2004. Except that it works ever so much better with Hillary! on the telescreen.
You can almost hear the strains of "Oceania,'Tis For Thee" in the background.
You can almost hear the strains of "Oceania,'Tis For Thee" in the background.
3.14.2007
You Can't Always Get What You Want
Well, you might be able to get it, but it could cost you an arm and a leg to do so. I found this out a while back when I was looking for a particular out-of-print music CD from the early 1990s, The Left Banke's There's Gonna Be A Storm. Amazon.com didn't have it, but they did have links to third-party vendors who had it. Of course, if it's a collector's item, then the cost will be higher. In this case, it was $66.96 and up. And I found that I didn't need it quite that badly.
So if you're looking for that CD of Nancy Sinatra/Lee Hazlewood duets (Fairy Tales and Fantasies: The Best of Nancy and Lee), it'll run you at least $97.47. Or perhaps you want the Greg Kihn Band's Kihnspiracy? Then you'd better be prepared to pony up at least $37.75, and at least $62.99 if you want the import version. Your wallet's in jeopardy, baby, ooooo-oo-oooo-oooo.
So if you're looking for that CD of Nancy Sinatra/Lee Hazlewood duets (Fairy Tales and Fantasies: The Best of Nancy and Lee), it'll run you at least $97.47. Or perhaps you want the Greg Kihn Band's Kihnspiracy? Then you'd better be prepared to pony up at least $37.75, and at least $62.99 if you want the import version. Your wallet's in jeopardy, baby, ooooo-oo-oooo-oooo.
3.13.2007
No Sparkle For Diamond Dave
Perhaps you saw this account of last night's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, which featured the addition of the Ronettes, Patti Smith, Grandmaster Flash, R.E.M. and Van Halen. Unfortunately, as the story notes:
It's kind of sad, really. You only get the chance for an honor like that once, and he just blew it off. I found it interesting to contrast this with how things are in the Baseball Hall of Fame, for instance. Most players who make it to Cooperstown aren't elected in their first year of eligibility. When they do finally make it, they feel more of a sense of comraderie with their fellow players than they did while they were playing the game. They tend to let old resentments and rivalries fade away. The musicians, by contrast, sometimes snipe at former bandmates; Debbie Harry of Blondie did this last year, I believe.
I think part of the difference is the different eligibility rules. For the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a band becomes eligible 25 years after their debut album. For the Baseball Hall of Fame, players have to be retired for five full seasons. This means that baseball players have some time away from the game to gain perspective, to recognize what was important and what wasn't. Even those who had gargantuan egos while playing tend to become a bit more humble when they are no longer major league stars.
Musicians, by contrast, don't retire. They may not be playing to packed stadiums any longer; they may be playing the county fair in Pig's Knuckle, Arkansas, but they're still out there. And so the David Lee Roths of the music world haven't had the opportunity to gain the perspective that a Cooperstown honoree has.
Not every baseball player automatically becomes wise and appreciative when elected to the Hall of Fame, but at least they behave more appropriately and show up for their induction. The only possible future exception might be Barry Bonds, who shares David Lee Roth's immense sense of self-worth. And I think even Bonds has enough respect for the game and for the Hall of Fame to show up for his induction if and when he is elected to Cooperstown.
Only Van Halen's second lead singer, Sammy Hagar, and ex-bass player Michael Anthony turned up for their induction. Guitarist Eddie Van Halen has just gone into rehab and original lead singer David Lee Roth stayed away in a tiff over what he would perform.Now, it's no secret that "Diamond Dave" has an ego the size of Lake Erie, so it's no surprise that he wasn't able to fit it inside of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It seems that he wanted to sing "Jump," but Velvet Revolver didn't have that one in their repertoire and didn't feel comfortable with trying to do it on short notice. They offered to do "You Really Got Me," but that wasn't good enough for Roth, so he skipped the appearance completely.
Hagar said he wished his bandmates could be there, but "it's out of our control."
"It's hard for Mike and I to be up here to do this, but you couldn't have kept me away from this with a shotgun," Hagar said.
It took less to keep Roth away. He stood up the hall, reportedly because he couldn't agree on what to sing with the band Velvet Revolver, which offered a tribute. Joel Peresman, president and CEO of the Hall of Fame, said Roth was offered a chance to sing a song of his choice with the house band. "The decision not to come was solely his, not ours."
It's kind of sad, really. You only get the chance for an honor like that once, and he just blew it off. I found it interesting to contrast this with how things are in the Baseball Hall of Fame, for instance. Most players who make it to Cooperstown aren't elected in their first year of eligibility. When they do finally make it, they feel more of a sense of comraderie with their fellow players than they did while they were playing the game. They tend to let old resentments and rivalries fade away. The musicians, by contrast, sometimes snipe at former bandmates; Debbie Harry of Blondie did this last year, I believe.
I think part of the difference is the different eligibility rules. For the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a band becomes eligible 25 years after their debut album. For the Baseball Hall of Fame, players have to be retired for five full seasons. This means that baseball players have some time away from the game to gain perspective, to recognize what was important and what wasn't. Even those who had gargantuan egos while playing tend to become a bit more humble when they are no longer major league stars.
Musicians, by contrast, don't retire. They may not be playing to packed stadiums any longer; they may be playing the county fair in Pig's Knuckle, Arkansas, but they're still out there. And so the David Lee Roths of the music world haven't had the opportunity to gain the perspective that a Cooperstown honoree has.
Not every baseball player automatically becomes wise and appreciative when elected to the Hall of Fame, but at least they behave more appropriately and show up for their induction. The only possible future exception might be Barry Bonds, who shares David Lee Roth's immense sense of self-worth. And I think even Bonds has enough respect for the game and for the Hall of Fame to show up for his induction if and when he is elected to Cooperstown.
3.12.2007
That Was Then, This Is Now
Perhaps you've been following President Bush's trip to South and Central America over the past few days. This morning, he'll be at an archaelogical site in Guatemala, which brings up this hilarious news story:
So, let's see, that would be those same Mayans who used to fight wars with their neighbors so that they could have captives to sacrifice to their gods by ripping their beating hearts out on the altars? Are those the "ancestors" who need to be able rest in peace? Because if President Bush is the kind of person that One Tiny (Fill-in-the-blank) thinks he is, then those bloodthirsty human-sacrificing ancestors should be pleased as punch to have him visit. How do you say "hypocrisy" in Mayan? This silliness is akin to having the Vatican decrying the injustice of capital punishment. But then, nobody expects the Mayan Inquisition!
Mayan priest to purify sacred site after Bush visit
GUATEMALA CITY — Mayan priests will purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate "bad spirits" after President Bush visits next week, an official with close ties to the group said Thursday.
"That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture," Juan Tiney, the director of a Mayan nongovernmental organization with close ties to Mayan religious and political leaders, said Thursday.
Bush's tour includes a stopover beginning late Sunday in Guatemala. On Monday morning he is scheduled to visit the archaeological site Iximche.
Tiney said the "spirit guides of the Mayan community" decided it would be necessary to cleanse the sacred site of "bad spirits" after Bush's visit so that their ancestors could rest in peace.
So, let's see, that would be those same Mayans who used to fight wars with their neighbors so that they could have captives to sacrifice to their gods by ripping their beating hearts out on the altars? Are those the "ancestors" who need to be able rest in peace? Because if President Bush is the kind of person that One Tiny (Fill-in-the-blank) thinks he is, then those bloodthirsty human-sacrificing ancestors should be pleased as punch to have him visit. How do you say "hypocrisy" in Mayan? This silliness is akin to having the Vatican decrying the injustice of capital punishment. But then, nobody expects the Mayan Inquisition!
3.08.2007
Peak Experiences
I saw in yesterday's news that NASA has fired Lisa Nowak from the astronaut program, and sent her back to military duty. I thought about her plight, as well as that of people like Britney Spears and Anna Nicole Smith. Was there a common thread to their self-destructive behavior? And then I thought of something, with which you may or may not agree: Some people's self-destructive behavior can be explained by their inability to recapture a peak experience.
Let's look at Lisa Nowak's career, for instance. She was an astronaut, part of a highly-competitive, high-achieving group. There are more astronauts in the program than there are flight slots on the Shuttles. Some astronauts spend years waiting for their opportunity to go into space, as Ms. Nowak did. Even if an astronaut does everything perfectly, there's still a chance that they'll never have another opportunity to break the surly bonds of Earth again. People don't enter the astronaut corps with a dream of being ground support personnel; they want to fly in space. They want to be Captain Kirk. And when they finally do make it into space, if they do, it is the peak experience of their career. For those days or weeks in space, they do what so many others can only dream of doing. They can look down upon the Earth from orbit, and that has to be a life-altering experience.
But what do you do when that peak experience is past? What do you do when you've landed and you know that you'll probably never get to do it again? That is what Ms. Nowak was looking at when she came back from last summer's Shuttle mission. Only those who have known such lofty peak experiences can understand the bitter disappointment of knowing that they can never be achieved again. But what does that do to a person? It could cause him or her to reassess his life, personal relationships, etc. And this was the time frame in which her marriage was falling apart, although it appears that she had been having an affair with Bill Oefelein for some three years, so apparently her marriage was none too healthy even before her peak experience.
How does this compare to Anna Nicole Smith? Well, she had made a long career out of her sex appeal, from the early days with Playboy, to marrying into big (and very, very old) money, to parlaying it into a television show in which she competed with Ozzie Osbourne to find out which celebrity was more wasted. But as any woman knows, youth's a thing that will not last. Anna Nicole was pushing 40, and the older a woman gets, the harder it is to compete with the younger, firmer sex kittens in her business. Perhaps this knowledge, and the inability to recapture her peak experiences of her younger days, led to the self-medication that seems likely to have contributed to her death.
And Britney Spears, like other former child stars, is finding that it's hard to stay on top in the popularity contests. What must it be like to have your greatest career success in your teens, and know that you're never likely to be able to top it for the rest of your life, no matter how hard you try? It's no big surprise that so many of those child stars end up with substance abuse problems, as they try to find something that feels as good as all of that attention and adulation that they used to get.
In the fairy tales, the hero slays the dragon and marries the beautiful princess and lives happily ever after. In real life, however, even if you get everything you ever dreamed of, then the problem is knowing that you have nothing left to strive for. Alexander the Great wept because there were no more worlds to conquer. He'd had his peak experience, and it was all downhill from there.
Let's look at Lisa Nowak's career, for instance. She was an astronaut, part of a highly-competitive, high-achieving group. There are more astronauts in the program than there are flight slots on the Shuttles. Some astronauts spend years waiting for their opportunity to go into space, as Ms. Nowak did. Even if an astronaut does everything perfectly, there's still a chance that they'll never have another opportunity to break the surly bonds of Earth again. People don't enter the astronaut corps with a dream of being ground support personnel; they want to fly in space. They want to be Captain Kirk. And when they finally do make it into space, if they do, it is the peak experience of their career. For those days or weeks in space, they do what so many others can only dream of doing. They can look down upon the Earth from orbit, and that has to be a life-altering experience.
But what do you do when that peak experience is past? What do you do when you've landed and you know that you'll probably never get to do it again? That is what Ms. Nowak was looking at when she came back from last summer's Shuttle mission. Only those who have known such lofty peak experiences can understand the bitter disappointment of knowing that they can never be achieved again. But what does that do to a person? It could cause him or her to reassess his life, personal relationships, etc. And this was the time frame in which her marriage was falling apart, although it appears that she had been having an affair with Bill Oefelein for some three years, so apparently her marriage was none too healthy even before her peak experience.
How does this compare to Anna Nicole Smith? Well, she had made a long career out of her sex appeal, from the early days with Playboy, to marrying into big (and very, very old) money, to parlaying it into a television show in which she competed with Ozzie Osbourne to find out which celebrity was more wasted. But as any woman knows, youth's a thing that will not last. Anna Nicole was pushing 40, and the older a woman gets, the harder it is to compete with the younger, firmer sex kittens in her business. Perhaps this knowledge, and the inability to recapture her peak experiences of her younger days, led to the self-medication that seems likely to have contributed to her death.
And Britney Spears, like other former child stars, is finding that it's hard to stay on top in the popularity contests. What must it be like to have your greatest career success in your teens, and know that you're never likely to be able to top it for the rest of your life, no matter how hard you try? It's no big surprise that so many of those child stars end up with substance abuse problems, as they try to find something that feels as good as all of that attention and adulation that they used to get.
In the fairy tales, the hero slays the dragon and marries the beautiful princess and lives happily ever after. In real life, however, even if you get everything you ever dreamed of, then the problem is knowing that you have nothing left to strive for. Alexander the Great wept because there were no more worlds to conquer. He'd had his peak experience, and it was all downhill from there.
3.07.2007
Pardon Scooter!
What a stinking travesty of justice! Ol' Captain Ahab Fitzgerald went out after the Great White Whale, and not only did he not get it, he didn't even get the Great White Shark. He got the remora that swam next to the shark. It'll look great in his trophy room.
The whole investigation was supposed to be about who leaked the name of CIA analyst Valerie Plame to the press, and whether any actual crime had been committed. Instead, special persecutor (no, that's not a typo) Patrick Fitzgerald went after Scooter Libby, not for leaking a name but for lying to FBI investigators and obstructing justice. Special persecutor Fitzgerald KNEW who the leaker was: The State Department's Richard Armitage, a motor-mouth gossip and a critic even at that time of the Bush administration's move toward war in Iraq.
And yet, even though the special persecutor KNEW who the leaker was, he continued to grill everyone else he could investigate, trying to find any inconsistencies in their testimony so that he could persecute them for perjury. A question: Do you remember in which order you discussed a particular issue on your job with people six months ago? Would you be willing to testify under oath about it? The correct answer is, "No, how the hell would I remember something that far back?!?!" And if you had a politically-motivated special persecutor bringing the weight of the "Justice" Department down on your head, you'd be looking at the same sort of sentence as Scooter Libby. Think about that. There, but for the grace of God and the lack of a special persecutor, go you.
If someone has told you that the Bushies deliberately leaked Plame's name as payback for her husband's bogus New York Times op-ed piece about what he claims he found in Niger, then that person lied to you, because Armitage wasn't carrying water for the Bush administration.
And so, we had this travesty of an investigation. There was no underlying crime committed, and THIS was the best that special persecutor Fitzgerald could come up with: A political witch-hunt in Washington. Well congratulations, Cotton Mather! You found that witch, alright. There's no way that a Republican can get a fair trial in that town. As David Frum noted in David Frum's Diary at National Review Online:
The whole investigation was supposed to be about who leaked the name of CIA analyst Valerie Plame to the press, and whether any actual crime had been committed. Instead, special persecutor (no, that's not a typo) Patrick Fitzgerald went after Scooter Libby, not for leaking a name but for lying to FBI investigators and obstructing justice. Special persecutor Fitzgerald KNEW who the leaker was: The State Department's Richard Armitage, a motor-mouth gossip and a critic even at that time of the Bush administration's move toward war in Iraq.
And yet, even though the special persecutor KNEW who the leaker was, he continued to grill everyone else he could investigate, trying to find any inconsistencies in their testimony so that he could persecute them for perjury. A question: Do you remember in which order you discussed a particular issue on your job with people six months ago? Would you be willing to testify under oath about it? The correct answer is, "No, how the hell would I remember something that far back?!?!" And if you had a politically-motivated special persecutor bringing the weight of the "Justice" Department down on your head, you'd be looking at the same sort of sentence as Scooter Libby. Think about that. There, but for the grace of God and the lack of a special persecutor, go you.
If someone has told you that the Bushies deliberately leaked Plame's name as payback for her husband's bogus New York Times op-ed piece about what he claims he found in Niger, then that person lied to you, because Armitage wasn't carrying water for the Bush administration.
And so, we had this travesty of an investigation. There was no underlying crime committed, and THIS was the best that special persecutor Fitzgerald could come up with: A political witch-hunt in Washington. Well congratulations, Cotton Mather! You found that witch, alright. There's no way that a Republican can get a fair trial in that town. As David Frum noted in David Frum's Diary at National Review Online:
Now we remember why Democrats are so much more eager than Republicans to criminalize politics: Because they know that the ultimate power over the lives and liberties of the contestants is held by juries drawn from the most Democratic jurisdiction in the country. Would Scooter have been convicted - would a prosecutor ever have dared to try him - if the capital of the United States were located in say Indianapolis?Or Salt Lake City, the real anti-Washington? No way. And President Bush should pardon Scooter Libby, ASAP.
3.06.2007
Oh, No, They Didn't!
Oh, yes, they did! Yesterday's New York Daily News cover had one of those amusing juxtapositions of headlines. The top half featured a picture of the civil rights groups and Democrat politicians in Selma, Alabama, on Sunday, with Barack Obama at the far left side of the picture and Hillary and Bill Clinton on the far right side. Above the line of people was a headline in white letters "Return to Selma." Just below the picture, in giant black capital letters: "SEX FIENDS ON PROWL" and below, in much smaller print - "Cops hunt scores of fugitive offenders."
The bottom headline is in a skinny-lined box, but if you don't look closely, your mind could accidentally conflate the headline with picture. Well, there's definitely ONE sex fiend that we know of in that picture! I had a good chuckle over it. Unfortunately, I can't find a copy of the picture. Amazingly, this was not the New York Post, the Big Apple's conservative-leaning tabloid, but the liberal Daily News. If it was a soccer game, that would be called an "own goal."
The bottom headline is in a skinny-lined box, but if you don't look closely, your mind could accidentally conflate the headline with picture. Well, there's definitely ONE sex fiend that we know of in that picture! I had a good chuckle over it. Unfortunately, I can't find a copy of the picture. Amazingly, this was not the New York Post, the Big Apple's conservative-leaning tabloid, but the liberal Daily News. If it was a soccer game, that would be called an "own goal."
3.04.2007
"Ve're Vhere? Liechtenstein? Oh, Scheisse!"
Funniest story of the weekend: Swiss Army accidentally invades Liechtenstein
After looking at that picture, I can understand why the Liechtensteiners are so unworried about the invincible Swiss juggernaut being unleashed upon their defenseless country.
"No blood for schnitzel!"
Unfunniest story of the weekend: Ann Coulter's comments at the CPAC convention on Friday, when she used a word slurring gay people to describe Democrat presidential candidate John Edwards. She obviously didn't read my post the other day where I noted:
She did Republicans no favors with her mean-spirited comments. There is plenty of other valid criticism about Mr. Edwards, starting with the hypocrisy of his populist "Two Americas" message while building a 28,000 square foot mansion in North Carolina. Even calling him a "narcissistic metrosexual" would probably have been accurate and acceptable. But what she said was offensive and hurtful to some people, and while most of those people won't vote Republican, some might, and it's stupid for people like Coulter to drive them off with name-calling.
And for those who say that the bomb-throwers on the Left, such as the bloggers Edwards hired and then released, do the same thing all the time, that doesn't make Coulter's comments any more acceptable. We don't want to sink the level of our opponents. We're better than that.
After looking at that picture, I can understand why the Liechtensteiners are so unworried about the invincible Swiss juggernaut being unleashed upon their defenseless country.
"No blood for schnitzel!"
Unfunniest story of the weekend: Ann Coulter's comments at the CPAC convention on Friday, when she used a word slurring gay people to describe Democrat presidential candidate John Edwards. She obviously didn't read my post the other day where I noted:
Say something offensive about anyone, anyone, and you'll be forced to apologize and buy them the roast duck with mango salsa.She should have read my blog. Now it looks like she owes a lot of people dinner.
She did Republicans no favors with her mean-spirited comments. There is plenty of other valid criticism about Mr. Edwards, starting with the hypocrisy of his populist "Two Americas" message while building a 28,000 square foot mansion in North Carolina. Even calling him a "narcissistic metrosexual" would probably have been accurate and acceptable. But what she said was offensive and hurtful to some people, and while most of those people won't vote Republican, some might, and it's stupid for people like Coulter to drive them off with name-calling.
And for those who say that the bomb-throwers on the Left, such as the bloggers Edwards hired and then released, do the same thing all the time, that doesn't make Coulter's comments any more acceptable. We don't want to sink the level of our opponents. We're better than that.
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