Thanks, I needed that.
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Month: May 2004
Got Nothin
I got nothing today. Go see what’s new at Pop-Up Mocker, now endorsed by the Marshall (Minnesota) Adult Education program, sorta.
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Book Review: The Little Book of Stupid Questions by David Borgenicht
Whenever Heather and I travel, I like to pick up one of these silly little quiz books to help us pass the time. I picked up the Barnes and Noble edition of this book, for a number of dollars no less, because I knew we would be on the road this year. Unfortunately, although this book bills itself as a way to “Get your friends to reveal their inner selves with The Little Book of Stupid Questions“. Unfortunately, the book serves more to let you get to know David Borgenicht as much as to get to know each other.
Face it, quiz books of this sort should proffer brain teasers to elicit chuckles, amusing stories, or wry revelations on the part of those answering the question. Unfortunately, Borgenicht cannot help intruding with follow-up questions that presume the question will be answered a certain way, such as
If, by some quirk of fate, you run into your favorite celebrity/supermodel fantasy object, and, by some other quirk of fate, they [sic] come onto you, what would you do? What if you were in a committed relationship? Do you ask for an autograph afterwards?
or
When you’re in the shower and you see a little hair on the tile wall, do you fill your hands with water and try to splash it off, or [sic] try to pluck it off with your fingers? Why are we so predictable?
Some of the questions are seemingly rhetorical, as though Borgenicht couldn’t wait for Amateur Night at the comedy club.
If you ate your own foot, would you lose weight?
or
Do you think that the first time corn ever popped [sic] it scared the hell out of the Indians?
and furthermore
Why do people who use "correct grammar" sound like such dorks?
Even when he’s not cracking wise or writing with a smirk, he’s repeating himself. What would your name be as a rock singer/super hero/exotic dancer? Who would you least like to be haunted by/stuck in an elevator with/spend an eternity in hell with? I started skipping the similar questions, the rhetorical questions, and the repeated questions. Ultimately, it left about a third of the book qualified to do what it advertises.
However, Borgenicht does lead to hours of amusing speculation with this question:
If they can make a "black box" that is so indestructible that it survives a plane crash, why don’t they just make the airplane out of the same material?
Wow. Is Borgenicht plagiarizing from George Carlin’s Brain Droppings, or is he plagiarizing from Mike Barnicle’s column in the Boston Globe which itself plagiarized from Brain Droppings and led to Barnicle’s dismissal?
Wondering about that answer could eat up some drive time in the middle of Illinois, werd.
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Steve Chapman, Visiting Professor to the Noggle School of Economics
In his column in last Thursday’s Chicago Tribune, Steve Chapman explains High gas prices are no cause for panic.
Lead:
Back in the 1970s, younger Americans might be surprised to learn, government bureaucrats controlled all prices in the economy. I’m not talking about the economy of the Soviet Union or Cuba–I’m talking about the economy of the United States. If a company wanted to raise its prices, it had to ask for permission from a federal agency, which didn’t always agree.
The experiment was a disaster, and it cured most politicians of the urge to meddle in such matters. They learned they weren’t qualified to decide the correct price of any commodity. Except one: gasoline.
Libertarians, for their foreign policy shortcomings, understand laissez-faire.
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They Must Have Just Gotten Back from Massachusetts
Misplaced modifier of the week, from John Kass’s column in last Thursday’s Chicago Tribune:
“I saw no weapons being used,” wrote Harrison, the wife of a retired cop whose husband was in the hospital, leaving her alone that night when it happened.
Or maybe it’s one of those open marriages.
Go read the column. It’s about how a single man, who confronts a suspicious character, is being persecuted by the authorities who know that prosecution and trial are but one “tool” in their toolbox to breaking someone.
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We Had To Break the Constitution in Order to Fix It
The Congressional Accountability for Judicial Activism Act of 2004, wherein our intrepid Congressmen decide that the balance of powers is outdated:
A BILL
To allow Congress to reverse the judgments of the United States Supreme Court. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the `Congressional Accountability for Judicial Activism Act of 2004′.
SEC. 2. CONGRESSIONAL REVERSAL OF SUPREME COURT JUDGMENTS.
The Congress may, if two thirds of each House agree, reverse a judgment of the United States Supreme Court–
(1) if that judgment is handed down after the date of the enactment of this Act; and
(2) to the extent that judgment concerns the constitutionality of an Act of Congress.
SEC. 3. PROCEDURE.
The procedure for reversing a judgment under section 2
shall be, as near as may be and consistent with the authority of each
House of Congress to adopt its own rules of proceeding, the same as
that used for considering whether or not to override a veto of
legislation by the President.SEC. 4. BASIS FOR ENACTMENT.
This Act is enacted pursuant to the power of Congress under article III, section 2, of the Constitution of the United States.
(Link seen on Fark.)
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She Wants A New Drug
To make a short story long, I sent a link to my beautiful wife who is a Starcraft player (dudes, she’s not only a sultry babe, but an übergeekette, too). She then reads the piece linked to, and she says I should read it, too, because it’s called The Ultimate War Sim, and so I do, but not because I am into Real-Time Strategy (RTS) games, but more because she’s a babe and I am hot for her, but it’s funny, so you should read it, too, gentle reader.
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Gen X Grows Middle-Aged
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Government of the Government, by the Government, for the Government
CNet reports that the New York Public Service Commission ruled that VOIP company Vonage is a phone company, and hence is subject to regulation by….the New York Public Service Commission!
In other news, the Federal Drug Administration has ruled that Vonage is also a pharmaceutical company, subject to FDA regulation; the TVA has classified vonage as a valley in Tennessee and subject to TVA oversight; and the State of Massachusetts has disaccredited it as a school district and is beginning action to take it over.
Since when do government entities get to actually pick new companies and new technologies to assimilate into their particular bullish labyrinth? Oh, since always, I guess.
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Read It and Weep With Laughter!
Well, probably not, but I have updated Pop-Up Mocker.
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Unwritten Mandate to the Airline Transport Authority
Drudge linked to this violin-soaked lamentation from the Airline Transport Authority, wherein the protagonists of their own melodrama lament fuel prices and their own inability to profitably run businesses:
US airlines have warned that the continuing sky-high price of fuel has “all but wiped out any chance of a profitable year for the industry”. [Revel in the British style, gentle readers, of placing the punctuation outside the quotation marks.]
The comments of their trade body, the Air Transport Association (ATA), came after Continental Airlines became the latest carrier to raise ticket prices.
To try to ease the high price of oil, the ATA called on President George W Bush to stop stockpiling the fuel.
Please, President Bush, stop thinking first of the strategic military needs of the country whom you’ve sworn to protect, and start thinking of the bottom lines of one of the most heavily-subsidized and ineptly-run industries. Do it for the children!–namely those poor waifish children of airline executives and their lobbyists, who can scarcely afford a summer abroad with the high ticket Pprices on their free rides.
Here’s the ATA’s president giving what passes for “strategic thinking” in the airline industry:
“We agree that the strategic reserve is an investment in the nation’s future,” said ATA president and chief executive James May.
“However, any investor will tell you that you buy low, sell high. Unfortunately the government is doing just the opposite.”
The strategic reserve is not an investment. Not even a hedge. It’s a vital necessity to keeping our military functioning should the flow of just-in-time petroleum stop or slow. The government is not buying oil to make a profit. It’s not buying at the best time. It’s buying when it can, which is now.
Unfortunately, that’s not what’s best for James May. Too bad, James May.
Also, did anyone else notice the weird tesseract in the BBC’s story?
Second paragraph:
The comments of their trade body, the Air Transport Association (ATA), came after Continental Airlines became the latest carrier to raise ticket prices.
Last paragraph:
Continental’s price rises were later mirrored by United and North West.
Whoa. Where am I? When am I?
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Good Advice, Forsaken When Relevant
I give Kass and Steinberg and Roeper all the linky-love they get in the blogosphere, but I haven’t linked to the Chicago Tribune‘s Mary Schmich. You know, she wrote the column about wearing sunscreen, which contains these immortal lines:
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they’ve faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.
Oh, how I should have heeded those words in 1997, when I was but five and twenty. Now that I am older and broken down, I know the truth in the beauty, strength, stamina, and wit I possessed when I was young. But I am an old man now, and that’s all gone.
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It Was Toilet Paper
MSNBC has picked the Worst (and Best) Television Series Finales, wherein they find M*A*S*H worst of all:
1. “M*A*S*H*” — “Goodbye, Farewell and Amen” (Feb. 28,
1983)
We know, we know, there are lots of you out there who think the two-and-a-half-hour finale is pure genius, but we think after 10-and-a-half increasingly sentimental seasons, the still top-rated show had lost the plot — literally. In the syrupy, self-righteous swan song, earnest Everyman surgeon Hawkeye Pierce (Alan Alda, who co-wrote and directed) suffers a nervous breakdown after witnessing a mother smother her baby on a bus. He recovers and returns to the 4077th in time for the war to end. Tears, manly hugs, and more tears build up to the big heart-tugging conclusion. As Hawkeye’s helicopter takes off, he sees that best bud B.J. (Mike Farrell) has spelled out “goodbye” in stones on the ground. Someone give us a schmaltz-ectomy — stat! Still, 106 million people tuned in for the pop-culture event (it’s still the all-time ratings champ), many of whom we expect will write in to tell us just how wrong we are.
Undoubtedly, they’ve already gotten numerous letters pointing out that Honeycutt spelled out goodbye with rolls of toilet paper, not stones.
I just wanted you, gentle reader, to know that I am much smarter than someone who’s actually figured out a way to earn money getting paid writing for the Internet.
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Fun With Kerning
On the News page of the New York Post today, we had this headline:
That particular word is flick, F-L-I-C-K. No matter what your first glance told you.
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And Your Little Dog, Too
A little unwritten mandate to the NPR news types who led off the 3:30 newscast with a two-sentence “story” that relatives of and former Abu Gharib detainees want the soldiers who humiliated them put to death. That’s the whole story. A throwaway line with no balance or other information, undoubtedly crafted carefully to work “Abu Gharib” into the the top of another newscast. Obviously, all those liberal arts classes did not go for nothing.
A hearty and somewhat louder unwritten mandate to you for giving this sort of barbaric, disproportionate punishment proposal a forum, which might lead some people to even entertain the notion that that West Virginia private is going to face a firing squad or a stoning for stripping clothes from a detainee or for making an Middle Easterner put a shoe in his mouth. How dare you? How <omitted> dare you?
What do I mean an unwritten mandate? Well, gentle reader, as this is a family blog, I won’t actually type it here, but suffice to say that when it’s a spoken mandate and I am feeling particularly combative, I tend to pronounce the verb portion to rhyme with awk.
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Sheer Hatefulness
Everybody sing!
Kangaroo lady with her bourbon in a pouch
Can’t afford the rent on a bamboo couch
Collecting back her favors cause her well is running dry
I know her act is terminal, but she ain’t gonna die
Slim intoxicado drinking dime store hooch
Is always in a circle with his part-time pooch
Little creepy’s playing dollies in the New York rain
Thinking Bowie’s just a knife.
Ooh the pain.
I ain’t seen the sun since I don’t know when.
The freaks come out at nine.
It’s twenty to ten.
What’s this funk that you call junk?
To me it’s just monkey business.
Get back!
Blind man in the vox that will probably die,
The village kids laugh as they walk by.
A psycho on the edge of this human garbage dump
And the vultures in the sewers are telling him to jump.
Into the fire from the frying pan, tripping on his tongue,
For a cool place to stand.
Where’s this shade that you’ve got it made?
To me, it’s just monkey business.
Monkey business, slipping on the track.
Monkey business, jungle in black.
Ain’t your business if I got no monkey on my back.
Monkey business, slipping on the track.
Monkey business, jungle in black.
Ain’t your business if I got no monkey on my back.
The vaseline gypsies and silicone souls dressed to the socie-tees.
Your hypocrite heartbeat and cheap alibis can’t get you by that monkey.
M-m-m-m-monkey, monkey!
Monkey business, slipping on the track.
Monkey business, jungle in black.
Ain’t your business if I got no monkey on my back.
Monkey business, slipping on the track.
Monkey business, jungle in black.
Ain’t your business if I got no monkey on my back.
Monkey business, you can’t tell me
(Monkey business) if I’ve got the business.
(Ain’t your business) no monkey on my back, yeah! huh!
Monkey business, ness, business.
Don’t give me your business, baby, woah ay!
Dudes, when I was in college, one night I did sit-ups keeping in time to that song. I am pleased to announce I didn’t vomit nor did I cry for my mother when the next song on the cassette, “Slave to the Grind”, began.
(Michele deserves it for slandering one of the greatest forgetable hair hard rock bands of the late 1980s.)
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Do Gun Prohibitions Make You Safer?
Ponder this story: £40m Heathrow gold robbery foiled:
A gang of men got out of the van and threatened warehouse staff with at least one firearm and other weapons, including knives, Scotland Yard said.
The gang tried to steal the gold bullion at the warehouse and force their way into a secure area containing a large quantity of bank notes, police said.
In a nation where citizens don’t carry guns, the bad guys feel safe trying to steal $70 million dollars with one gun and a couple of knives.
Thieves would not be so bold in great swaths of the United States and in Israel.
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Compare and Contrast
Class, today’s compare and contrast courtesy of FoxNews.com and CNN.com. The subject: Sarin gas munitions in Iraq. Right-click and select View Image to see full image for each.
| FoxNews.com | CNN.com |
| 10:17 am | |
 “Nerve Gas Released By Iraq Roadside Bomb“ Important stuff up first. Nerve Gas. Iraq. Roadside Bomb. |
 “Artillery round in Iraq emits sarin gas, U.S. military says“ The incident’s diminishing begins. It’s just an artillery round emitting a gas, not an improvised explosive device. Kudos, too, for using the Authorities Allege Asterisk rhetorical device to make the teller of the incident into the story. |
| 3 pm (sorry, no screen caps) |
|
| “U.S. Confirms WMD in Iraq“ | None.
Main headline involves story of Iraq Governing Council leader. |
| 7 pm | |
 “Sarin, Mustard Gas Found in Iraq“ Elaborating and emphasizing the WMD. |
 “Busy Hurricane Season Ahead“ Nothing to see here, folks.. |
Within nine hours, CNN had decided that further evidence of Iraq’s non-compliance with U.N. mandates regarding banned weapons and weapons systems are no longer important. Not as important as seasonal weather patterns in the Caribbean, anyway.
Update: Ravenwood noticed it, too.
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Kass on Abu Gharib
John Kass, of the Chicago Tribune, reflects on what Abu Gharib says about America (registration required). Cripes, what to excerpt?
You might see these photos as evidence that we should never have been in Iraq, that we’re no different than our enemy, that we should pull out now.
I’d respectfully disagree with that.
We are different. There is no moral equivalency here, despite what some politicians want you to believe.
Those Americans who committed outrages at Abu Ghraib should be sent to prison, and not only the enlisted people and the strange woman with the dog leash, but their commanders as well. Let’s be clear on that. Torture and the mass murder of innocents was Saddam’s policy. That is not our policy. Just as the severing of heads and putting it on video is not our policy.
As a political tactic, comparing the United States to Saddam Hussein promotes uncertainty in selected constituencies, particularly the young. It is absolutely necessary that we reject it, because it saps American confidence. It is dangerous.
There is no other option but to accomplish the mission in Iraq, to develop some stable government and turn the country over to the Iraqi people. Yes, that might mean that U.S. forces will be there for years.
That should give you a taste, but you’ll have to read the whole thing to see him quote Victor Davis Hanson.
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Help Fight Spurious Lawsuits
Overlawyered.com and Radley Balko report on the next target of Big Litigation: the alcohol industry.
Friends, Romans, countrymen, this cannot stand. I urge you to each contribute heavily to fill the coffers of the defense funds for the brewers, vintners, and distillers. I myself like to contribute and show my support by stopping by the liquor store frequently, and I plead that you do the same. And invite me over.
Thank you, that is all.
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