Geek Humor

Pejman said:

I see that the Mighty Bear had a logo contest and the winner was a doozy of an entry. Perhaps a logo contest for this site is in order . . .

And I said:

Crap, I don’t know Logo.

Can’t we just use BASIC instead?

Hah! Geek humor! I kill me. And make others want to.

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A New Calvin Silhouette Auditions

Hey, Michelle Malkin has a picture of a young Muslim lad urinating on the American flag.

As a person who votes Republican more than 40% of the time (and Democrat about 5% of the time, so don’t ostracize me from the cool blogoclique), I saw we should start burning down Indian restaurants in the United States reach a greater understanding between our culture and theirs.

In our culture, some people put a decal of a young man from an old comic strip urinating on some symbol or another into their rear windows of their automobiles to show the owner’s contempt for what the symbol represents. In theirs, some people put a decapitation of a young man onto their Web sites to show the people’s contempt for the infidels.

Okay, I understand aplenty now.

However, pardon me if I look at the picture and say, hey, it’s a kid peeing on a square of cloth that represents free speech. How precocious. If he peed on a Koran amidst all those Muslims, he’d be dead.

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They Would Change My Personality All Right

Dangerrrr: cats could alter your personality:

THEY may look like lovable pets but Britain’s estimated 9m domestic cats are being blamed by scientists for infecting up to half the population with a parasite that can alter people’s personalities.

British scientists think it’s a parasite changing people’s behaviors? You know, if our housecats were 9m tall (that’s 29.5275591 feet American), they’d affect my behavior, parasite or not.

More chicken, sir?

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Steinberg on Others on Blago, Uh, Illinois’ Governor

From Neil Steinberg’s Chicago Sun-Times column today:

Daley isn’t the only public servant receiving scrutiny. Our embattled governor, Rod Blagojevich, is on everybody’s minds and lips. His name came up in three very different conversations I had with three very different people one day this week. Since I am known as being a negative sort, I will present the bare facts behind the trio of comments without any kind of embroidery:

Time: 12 noon. Place: Back room at Gene & Georgetti’s. Speaker: a well-respected, longtime Chicago editor:

“I’ve been watching politics for 40 years, and he’s the worst governor we’ve ever had, bar none.”

Time: 2:30 p.m. Place: Editorial board room of the Sun-Times. Speaker: a longtime state officeholder:

“He’s missing in action and not paying attention.”

Time: 5:30 p.m. Place: the Metra Milwaukee North Line. Speaker: a lady on a train:

“He’s in over his head. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. I kinda feel sorry for him.”

When Neil Steinberg turns on a Democrat, it’s obvious the only principle the Democrat has espoused is Peter.

But you know, gentle reader, how I feel about my governor. I want to draft Matt Blunt 2008.

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It Takes A Village To Seize a Child

State seizes cancer-stricken girl:

Child welfare officials seized a 12-year-old cancer patient from her parents, saying they were blocking radiation treatment that doctors say she needs.

State officials even issued an Amber Alert for a the child, who was in the custody of her parents:

Last week, authorities issued an Amber Alert to gain temporary custody of Katie after receiving an anonymous tip about possible neglect. She was found with her mother at a family ranch, about 80 miles west of Corpus Christi near Freer, on Saturday.

Certainly, the mother must face some charges:

Michele Wernecke was arrested on charges of interfering with child custody and was released Monday after posting $50,000 bond.

Intefering with the state that wants to take custody of your child.

Illinois? Massachusetts? No. Texas.

Friends, I am not for denying treatment of cancer-stricken kids, but I do fear allowing states to seize children from their parents when experts think the children are not being raised healthy. Because it’s a matter of degree and not kind that prevents Departments of Protecting The CHILDREN from seizing children from homes that serve too much soda, and government departments always turn up the heat.

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Too Secure

Some security is too secure. For example, I was signing up for something, and the application tried to prevent automated registration by forcing me to type this:

Security?

I can take my chances on whether the second and fourth characters are Ks or Xs, but what the dog is that third character? I don’t have a futhark keyboard, for cryin’ out loud.

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Phish: The Next Generation

I received an e-mail today, nominally from Sprint, but you never know:

Dear Valued Sprint Customer,

At Sprint, our focus is making sure that we always provide you with the highest level of service. Therefore, our policy is to send you emails only with your permission. Click here if you’d like to continue receiving email communications regarding account information, special offers and product updates. Remember that Sprint respects your privacy and will never share, sell, or rent your email address to any third parties.

Whether your current Sprint Service Plan is for personal or business use, we believe that email is the most efficient and environmentally friendly way to communicate with you. If you do not respond to this message, you will no longer receive emails from Sprint (unless you later provide us with your permission). This does not apply to online invoice notifications.

Thank you,
Sprint Customer Service

So I think: This is the future of the phish scam. A two-parter. Much like the Nigerian scam seeks a response, the phuture phish will send out opt-in notifications like this, and when the user clicks okay to acknowledge he or she is a customer of the company in question, then sometime in the near future, the “company” comes back with an audit e-mail or the common phish scams.

The scam will target only users who have acknowledged that they have an offline relationship with the company whose logo appears in the scam, and the user will expect legitimate e-mail from the company because he or she has told the company that he or she wants e-mail from the company.

It’s slick, it’s elegant, and it’s coming….

(Added to the Outside the Beltway Traffic Jam.)

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Hardly a Scientific Sample

Experts have determined the macho man is dead. Of course, it’s not a relevant set of experts:

“The masculine ideal is being completely modified. All the traditional male values of authority, infallibility, virility and strength are being completely overturned,” said Pierre Francois Le Louet, the agency’s managing director.

Instead today’s males are turning more towards “creativity, sensitivity and multiplicity,” as seen already in recent seasons on the catwalks of Paris and Milan.

When you want to study a man in his natural environment, you shouldn’t go to the catwalks of Paris and Milan. The cathouses, maybe, but never the catwalks.

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Weber and Dolan Are My True Masters

Woohoo! My first Saw Doctors CD arrived in the mail today.

I know, after listening for six years, you would think I would have one by now; however, every time I looked for them in the local music shops, they weren’t in stock. I am always so very slow to Amazon one.

Feel free to use that new verb in your sentences from now on: To Amazon (v tr). I Amazon it, you Amazon it, he she or it Amazons it, we Amazon it. Remember, to keep the short o sound, when you add a suffix, it’s Amazonned, Amazonning, Amazonner.

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Book Report: Felton & Fowler’s Best, Worse, and Most Unusual by Bruce Felton and Mark Fowler (1975)

I probably inherited this book from my aunt, and I selected it because I’m a sucker for book of list sorts of things and other capsulated books where I can browse and pick up trivial knowledge. Like who Beethoven thought was the best composer ever, and so on. Of course, I’m not going to tell you the answer. If you want to know, you’ll just have to wait for the question to come my way in competition, and hope you’re snacking on pretzel rods at my table in trivia night and not sitting across the table from me, rubbing your unused pie pieces like Captain Queeg.

The book crosses into some gauche territory, with its descriptions of how to best butcher and prepare human flesh for consumption, and into some unintentionally tragic territory, such as awarding Worst Office Building Honors to the World Trade Center. But it’s a good bit of reading, amusing, and unfortunately not something to take as gospel. For its text describes the worst sport, which the Aztecs of Peru….. Well, never you mind, it still provides authoritative answers to unasked trivia questions which might prove true.

But not the Aztecs of Peru.

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