Humor
Humor
Now relegated to Blogblivion...Friday, September 08, 2006
Happy Birthday
To blogger Tim at My Money Forest. Ah, to be a mere 26 again…
Speaking of being younger, seeing the abbreviation MMF reminds me of the days when we’d all go to Applebee’s periodically after work, or have going away parties there for departing colleagues. In the early days, the usual bartender was a young woman named Jody. I was introduced to a drink that was a specialty of hers, best ordered when she was there because nobody else could make it half as well. It was called a Mongolian Motherfucker, or MMF for short. It amused the waitresses sometimes to make me ask for it by its full name, rather than its initials. It was delicious, but very strong, based on Midori, with whatever the blue stuff is called, a couple other alcohols, and I think a bit of sour mix as the only thing that wasn’t alcohol in it. My alternate drink of choice at the time was their amazing frozen mudslides, better than I have had anywhere else, and probably about 1500 calories each. Somewhere among my non-digital pictures I have one of our bartender buddy sitting on the lap of one of my colleagues. Those were the days.
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Six Again
Very funny! My mind was going a different direction as they got in bed at the end of the day…
Monday, August 28, 2006
Crazy Dream
This makes my having a dream last night in which I met and talked with Ted Kennedy all the more fascinating.
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Received In E-Mail
Monday, August 14, 2006
Rambling Thunder
Thor and Elisabeth Shue would be proud.
I can’t help mentally adding “shape of a blog!” after “‘ThunderJournal’ *lightning strike*” but maybe that’s just me.
Friday, August 04, 2006
Happy Birthday
To blogger VW Bug of One Happy Dog Speaks, who is The Answer today.
Sunday, July 30, 2006
Civilized
That’s what Deb would call this. Heh.
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Happy Birthday
To fellow blogging geek Chan Eddy, celebrating the big five-OH, but without the fun Hawaii part. Or is that the big five-OW?
Isn’t it remarkable how much some people already look like themselves, decades ahead of time? This is almost caption-worthy…
“Mom, could a face this innocent really have done that?”
“Not me, Dad. It was the summah people!”
“Whaddaya mean my room isn’t a ‘no wake’ zone?”
“Missing tubes from your radio? Haven’t seen ‘em.”
“Pay no attention to the device behind the curtain...”
Friday, July 21, 2006
Acidman Meets Young Pussy
And don’t miss McGehee’s comment: “Top Ten Ways to Tell If Your Cat Was Rob “Acidmanâ€? Smith in a Former Life.” Heh.
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Steven Taylor for President
No pipeweed required to imagine it.
Steven Taylor: A Rare Rational Choice For America
This message brought to you by the Committee to Draft Steven Taylor for President.
Saturday, July 08, 2006
Notes to Self
When you think you have been invited to a cookout, verify that it is indeed a cookout and not merely a cake and ice cream birthday party. When in doubt, definitely don’t go on an empty stomach, and make sure Sadie doesn’t.
If the time a cookout/birthday party is supposed to start is supplied to you more than a few days ahead of time, you might want to double-check, say, the day before, so being an hour late doesn’t place you there early.
At least on the back of your neck, you sunburn more easily than your daughter. Might want to have the sunscreen in the car, and not just for her sake. (Aloe gel rocks, but better not to need it.) No need to encourage any of your moles or skin tags to mutate into action, even if the doctor is keeping an eye on them.
Friday, July 07, 2006
Sadie Makes Fark
Sadie has been Farked. Learned via Jen, whose blog is the background of the picture in question. It’s the picture from this post.
I signed up for a Fark account so I could leave a comment telling people, well… this:
Just to let everyone know, that’s a picture of my daughter (not a boy, short hair at the time notwithstanding), Sadie, from a series I took and posted at Accidental Verbosity of her “reading” different blogs on my monitor. The one with Jen’s (Lintefiniel Musings) was probably the best of those. It was posted on July 18, 2005, so she’d have been just short of 10 months old at the time.
I just love a lot of these and will have to save them for her to see when she’s old enough to appreciate it.
Trouble is, it won’t let you comment for the first 24 hours after signing up. Sheesh.
Some of you might enjoy checking them out. They can be freaky, but mostly they’re quite cool and downright LOL amusing.
Friday, June 30, 2006
In Memory Of Acidman
“There’s nothing good about fireants.”
He used to cuss out the little buggers, and he got a kick out of this.
Thursday, June 29, 2006
Senioritis?
To me this isn’t a senior moment, but an ordinary moment that makes me rue having certain of my mothers genes, or something. Though not with coffee cups. I tend to use a currently favored, usually oversized, cup over and over, day after day, so no room for grabbing a second cup in there.
However, there is the problem of forgetting whether I already sweetened it, if you distract me for the slightest bit of time before the whole sweetening and lightening process is completed.
On a scarily related note, the night before last I had a dream, or more accurately a nightmare, in which I showed unmistakable indication of developing Alzheimer’s. I’ll take the senior moments and the “doh!” slips of the brain (like pouring soad into the coffee instead of a glass, for instance), but please, not that. Never that.
Monday, June 26, 2006
The Man
Via Lynn, this post on Meeting the Man brings back memories.
When I did Microsoft support, when someone from our way visited Washington, our counterparts in Bellevue would take them to Dixie’s as one of the “must go” places, and would try to get them to try that hot sauce. Word got around before too many actually tried it, but I heard firsthand from one of the victims. He was pretty much fooled into it, as I recall.
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Massachusetts
Harvey has a bunch of fun facts about Massachusetts that you may have never known before.
Saturday, June 10, 2006
I Can’t Let You Do That, Rob
I can imagine much better uses for a friendly yet not too bright robot named Amy. Of course, then she would have to be more than just a program.
At least she’s not a shipboard AI…
Hackbarth, Sean Hackbarth
Sean has something he wants everyone linking him to know.
So be sure to comply. It’s not like he went and adopted an unbloggable symbol by which to be known and linked.
“Surpassingly Bad”
Via Billy Beck, via Trey Givens, a rendition of The Star Spangled Banner that will make you laugh and cringe, and be so happy you are not the lyrically dyslexic singer - or the person whose funeral it apparently is.
This is probably funnier than any of the American Idol tryout disasters some people watch the early episodes of AI to see.
Friday, June 09, 2006
Overheard In Our House
Deb, in response to my story of an enthusiastic, overweight drummer I saw in a local band once upon a time:
“Jowls flailing!? Can jowls flail?”
Me:
“I think only if you’re Richard Nixon.”
Saturday, May 27, 2006
Mmmm… Ice Cream
|
You Are Chubby Hubby Ice Cream |
 So there’s more of you to love… a whole lot more! |
Via CTG, who is a yummy sounding flavor I have never heard of before.
Saturday, May 20, 2006
Freddie and the Soul Patrol
Freddie Garrity, of Freddie and the Dreamers, has died at 69. I am familiar with the catchy song “Do The Freddie,” but was unaware of the background:
It was on an American television show that Mr Garrity was asked about his stage antics.
“It’s a dance,” he said, “It’s called the Freddie.”
Within weeks, the band was back in the charts with a song called Do The Freddie.
Naturally this made me think of pending American Idol season 5 winner Taylor Hicks (you could say he has it all sewn up). Perhaps he should come out with a similar song; “Do The Taylor, Woooh!”
All joking aside, I’m telling you now rest in peace Freddie.
Sunday, May 14, 2006
“And it was only ridden by a little old baby on Sundays…”
Sadie shows Valerie the exersaucer’s cool features.
Scene From the Church of Heliumtology
Sadie attempts to show Valerie how to salute properly should the Balloon God happen to appear.
Friday, May 12, 2006
No Relation to Mack
Paul Burgess is knife blogging. Isn’t it purty?
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
So Much AI Blogging, So Little Time
If you need something to do while awaiting the results show when Chris Katharine (please?) gets the axe, then check out some of the best and funniest Idol blogging I have seen, by Doug Williams.
SarahK, your Idol blogging now has worthy competition.
Well, then there’s always the not-necessarily-funny takes by Dean, Kate, Kate, Sharon, and Ann.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Take a Leak
How’s this for the goofiest thing ever: Encouraging bloggers to link other blogs!
Amazing. Why didn’t anyone ever think of that before? Blogs and linkage going together? Who knew!
Or have I been unwittingly transported out of the blogosphere, to a new place where links are hoarded and camaraderie stifled? Guess I should pay more attention to the ‘sphere around me so I don’t get confuzzled.
Friday, May 05, 2006
When Toddlers Pick Their Own Clothes
Thursday, May 04, 2006
Erica Durance NSFW and Search Spike Oddness
I have a lot of fun loading the blog with evocative (provocative?) search terms that get people landing here unexpectedly. Probably the most successful ever has been Erica Durance nude, naked, topless, without clothes, free pictures, photos, whatever. Mostly the first one though.
Erica Durance is the babe they brought into the Smallville world to play Chloe’s cousin, Lois Lane. I haven’t watched Smallville in ages, though not for lack of interest. It’s the tradition I have of compulsive show watching drifting off into “whatever,” whether triggered by schedule changes or viewing conflicts or lapses in quality or what. In this case I figure there’s always DVD eventually.
Unlike most celebrities, she did appear nude in a film, House of the Dead, and at least one picture of her topless does exist.
We recently had a strange spike in traffic, primarily from image searches for Erica Durance that treated us as if we were hosting the NSFW (not safe for work) picture you will see below the fold, somehow passing it through from another site, in their 2004 section. The archive it sent people to on our blog didn’t even appear to mention Erica Durance, let alone link the picture. Crazy interwebs. And so we got this:
Makes me wonder what happened on the latest Smallville to provoke the surge of searches for Erica Durance in some state or another of undress.
If we’re going to get the traffic, we might as well have the real thing available. So here it is, below the fold:
Sunday, April 30, 2006
Pundit Roundtable
I had the pleasure of participating in the latest Pundit Roundtable over at WILLisms. This is a regular feature in which a few other bloggers and the host give their answers to a couple of questions, or related sets of questions, on different topics. It’s sort of like the McLaughlin Group in blog form, only different. Certainly more verbose.
The first topic was: How did we get into this mess of high gas prices? What is the solution? Give us your plan for getting gasoline to under $2 a gallon.
The second topic was: You have the power of life or death over any two figures from history. You may condemn one to an early death, and save one from their fated demise. Who do you choose and why?
I will cross-post my responses below, but you should go check out the complete Pundit Roundtable for the whole thing, including Jay Tea, David Anderson, and the host himself, Ken McCracken.
Now, my responses. Topic one, oil and gas prices:
People like simple, knee jerk, catch phrase explanations for things, so that is what we hear a lot of on the dramatic recent gas price increases. Pick the right one and you might even win some votes, but that doesn’t make you less wrong, or at least unrealistically pat.
The current price behavior is an unfortunate, yet perhaps overdue, confluence of many factors. There’s geopolitical forces. It’s oil; there’s always geopolitical forces. There’s the economic growth and therefore increased demand in places like China, but do we really want to go backward and lose the other benefits? There are the forces of environmentalism, NIMBY and regulation. Thus the lack of refining capacity, lack of new nuclear power in the overall mix - none of this exists in a vacuum, lack of new drilling in this country - for what that’s worth, given the fungibile nature of oil, seasonal and other blend requirements that make production more expensive and disrupt already tight refining capacity, and fundamental, seasonally variable supply and demand.
The best thing anyone could do for gas prices is to get out of the way. Let economics work. High prices give incentive to develop new sources of oil, as well as alternatives that might reduce the extent to which we depend on same. People will act to conserve, or if they don’t then the price isn’t so excessive after all. Companies will act to chase revenue and profits available at these prices that might not be at lower prices, and in so doing are likely to make the cost of alternatives or more efficient extraction methods fall.
There seems to be a high income punditry class trumpeting how low gas prices are in historical terms, and they are right. However, your average person has trouble appreciating that long term trend when the price rockets up so quickly. It’s as if milk went up another 75 cents in the course of a few months; of course we’d all complain. This is “milk” we buy five, ten, twenty, thirty gallons a week, as opposed to a gallon or two. It really does hurt.
The mistake is rushing to do something political about that pain. We’ll adjust. We’ll pursue ways to save - or not - and the signals from that will ripple through the economy to reflect in prices and availability. To the extent that we can have an influence given the politicization and regulation of oil, and energy generally.
Where the spike toward $3 was rapid, any fallback to $2 and under will be slow. How long to get that many people driving higher mileage cars? How long to slay the NIMBY Monster and build more refineries? How long to persuade congresscritters to encourage new nuclear, encourage new drilling, etc.- or at least back off of preventing or slowing same.
My plan? Get out of the way and let the economy work. Ultimately this works even if we do nothing to change the nutjob governments in key oil producing countries. Fungibility: Know it, love it.
Topic two, creating an alternate history through an extended life and an early death for two historical figures:
This is tougher than it sounds, and one of my answers sums that up in one person. My knee jerk thought on who to condemn, partly on the idea so many people would find it a controversial choice, was Lincoln.
I rapidly changed my mind and decided Lincoln was the most logical choice off the top of my head for saving, on the idea he’d done all the harm he was going to do, but was killed before he could do all the followup good we needed. His life may have been about the Civil War, expansion of federal power, and a near dictatorial Presidency, but the founders made that conflict almost inevitable, under someone, by what they had to do and gloss over to make the Constitution happen at all. Even if the muddy status of slavery couldn’t be handled, was it really a show stopper to leave the right of states to leave the union implicit rather than explicit? Some tell me it absolutely was.
After the war, things went awry due to the loss of Lincoln, so taking the war we had instead of the war we might imagine could have happened (or not), keep Lincoln alive for the cleanup. That probably makes for a smoother reconstruction and integration of former slaves, and blacks in general, into ordinary society. Imagine no segregation in the 20th century, no need for the civil rights movement, and arguably no need for programs like affirmative action to keep the races disparate. LBJ is on my short list of kill targets, but if we spare Lincoln, perhaps we lose some of the damage of LBJ’s war on poverty. So perhaps LBJ can live, if Lincoln does. The ripples go far.
The toughest question of all is who to kill, because there are just too many. Do I go with someone obvious, like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or Jimmy Carter? Maybe whoever is responsible for giving up Cuba? (Who is that, anyway? Help me, history buffs, you’re my only hope.) LBJ? Not if Lincoln lives. John Maynard Keynes? Imagine, no famed “we’re all Keynesians now” quote from Ronald Reagan (who is decidedly not on my short list). As I write this, I lean strongly in JMK’s direction, but if we’re gunning for “economists,” why not Marx? Heck, that’s like taking a scythe to multiple follow-ons at once. I could suggest an early demise for Jesus Christ and make the Christians feel persecuted. Oh wait, they already do! Plus if we’re being mean enough to suggest that, why not that Paul dude who got it past the mere cult stage. Or I could invite a denial of service attack by suggesting a certain crazy Arab before he can impose his hallucinations on the world. FDR? But like Lincoln, he is a mixed bag of deepest evil and decisive good, and unlike Lincoln he got to live to do the best of the good.
Augh! Can’t. Make. Up. My. Mind.
Aw, what the heck. It’s obvious, but let’s go with Karl Marx. Let the folks with dictatorial impulses find another ostensible muse to justify themselves rather than merely being what they are. Imagine a twentieth century without Marx looming over it like the father of nightmares.
Had I been thinking, I would have ended that with a “he’s dead Jim” joke. Oh well.
