AWPC: The Best Reason to Shoot a Gun

I'm real popular at the lunch table.

Gun Nut 1: There was this great footage on YouTube of an African Safari where they are tracking down a lion that they had wounded but hadn't killed. They find him and the lion leaps out of the bushes, the guy turns and shoots, and the lion lands on top of him dead.

Gun Nut 2: You know what I think about these African safaris? I just don't see the point. They are going there to hunt down some animal so they can hang its head on a wall. I just don't see the point in shooting something if you aren't going to eat it.

Gun Nut Jake: You know, I feel the same way about war.

Apparently I am alone in this sentiment.

AWPC

Him: I was out geocaching and came across this one that was hidden near a cemetery. I don't know why people choose to put these things in cemeteries but they do. I normally don't go after ones in cemeteries but this was in the woods beside it. While searching through the woods I found beer bottles, condom wrappers, used condoms, and tons of these little bottles of sex lube, all empty. What kind of person would do that?

Me: If I end up getting buried I want it to be at that cemetery.

I'm sick of washing my hands!

I'm reading this article on the swine flu, and it says:

Q: How easy is it to catch this virus?

A: Scientists don't yet know if it takes fairly close or prolonged contact with someone who's sick, or if it's more easily spread. But in general, flu viruses spread through uncovered coughs and sneezes or — and this is important — by touching your mouth or nose with unwashed hands. Flu viruses can live on surfaces for several hours, like a doorknob just touched by someone who sneezed into his hand.

I was considering having some lunch, so I decide I should go wash my hands.

As I'm finishing washing them, I realize that I kinda have to pee. I do that, and then I wash my hands again.

As I'm leaving the bathroom, the doorbell buzzes. UPS has a package for my wife. I take it inside, and notice it was shipped from southern California, which is adjacent to Mexico, where the flu pandemic started, so I wash my hands again.

About that point, I realize how silly this is, so when I get done washing up, I go back to the living room and blog my outrage. In the process, I touch the keyboard that I'd been touching all morning/afternoon before I washed my hands. And I'm still haven't had lunch, so I guess I'll have to go wash my hands again.

Freaking hand-washing meme's got me wrapped around its' sudsy little finger!

Crappy First Date

Thanks to Krys for finding this slice of Portland love life.

To the woman that crapped in my car… - m4w

I am hoping that this post finds you. I know that it could quite possibly be the most humiliating first date that you have ever been on, but I am willing to look past that.

I thought we had chemistry sitting at McMenamins sharing that basket of Cajun Tots while drinking the Terminator Stout. I really felt like there was a connection there. I found you to be intelligent and witty and looked forward to further conversation with you.

At some point in life, everyone has gambled on a fart and lost. It just happened to be on a first date in the passenger seat of my car. Please don’t feel bad. The package I sent you with Pepto the next day and the note that said “First dates are always a crap shoot. Call me” was meant to be funny, not offensive.

I have gambled on a fart and lost on multiple occasions. The first time I did it was very memorable. It happened when I was five and sitting on my uncle’s lap. I am lactose intolerant, but love cheese. I probably win 95% of the time, but I don’t think anyone wins 100% of the time. That’s why they call it “gambling”. I’m the last person to judge you for crapping your pants. In fact, I am impressed by your boldness. The timing on the other hand, could have been a tad bit better…like when you’re not sitting on a heated leather seat…

What I am trying to say is that if you want to go out again, I would be more than happy to take you someplace where we can get a meal that is high in fiber and less taxing on the digestive tract.

I await your call, Tad

P.S. - If you shat yourself on purpose to end the evening early…Touché…

I've had a few crappy dates, some might even consider them shitty, but never has it been a literal statement of events.

And I can't recall ever gambling on a fart and losing.

Just in Time for Summer...

They've switched me back to swing shift.

Paint it Black

Scientists Make Blackest Material Ever. Goths across the globe rejoice, in their own gothy way. (inset)

Unsung Heroines

In a world where beauty is rewarded in upscale pageants and televised viewer voting spectaculars, an honest working girl can feel like she's getting the shaft.

Atlantic City Cocktail Waitress Crowned In Mistress USA Pageant

Lacey Lauderdale, a 25-year-old cocktail waitress at the Showboat Casino & Hotel in Atlantic City, was named the winner of the 2008 Mistress USA Pageant, a competition held each year since 1954 to honor the country's most beautiful and talented other women.

The clandestine pageant took place Sunday evening in a New Jersey motel room off Exit 23, shortly after the nation's males told their wives they were going out bowling with some friends.

Skidoo!

Meaty Tubes Fascinate Me

Mushrooms For The Win

A friend insisted that I watch Deadliest Warrior: Viking vs Samurai. He's a fan of Samurais and I am a Viking.

I watched. Lame! Mostly. Crappy show at least. Let me spoil the ending for everyone and tell you they give the victory to the Samurai. Not a big surprise. When you boil everything down to physics, the Japs had it goin' on. Viking weaponry fared much better than I expected, though. Their fancy pants computer simulations ran combat 1,000 times and gave 470 wins to the Viking and 530 to the Samurai. Not bad for a bunch of Norse savages.

What the simulation does not account for was the secret weapon of the berserker; mushroom infused mead. Imagine getting belligerently drunk on mead that has had amanita muscaria mushrooms soaking in it then going into combat tripping your balls off. The blood starts to flow, you go into a rage, your eyes are windows into the abyss, showing wide eyed black like some demon from a nightmare yet undreamed. The modern equivalent would be to train rabid bears as IRS collection agents. Yes, they were that scary.

Not to mention, the Samurai were the protectors of a tiny feudal island. The Vikings fucked up everyone's shit.

Japanese women would have fared better against the Norsemen, what with them being used to giant penis tentacled demon attacks* and all. The rapings of the Vikings would probably have been a welcome change.

* WARNING! Really fucking disturbing picture in that link and definitely NSFW. So I had to share.

That's Cap'm Ron Paul to you, me mateys!

I thought Ron Paul was cool before he endorsed that bunch of hatemongering religious loonies who masquerade behind the name "The Constitution Party". Clearly, he was reading this blog, and has been working for months to try to find a new platform that would get us behind him.

Ron Paul: Bring back private pirate hunters with "letters of marque"
WASHINGTON – A congressman from Texas who's known for broadsides at U.S. foreign policy says Somali piracy has an age-old solution" - letters of marque" empowering private citizens to chase the criminals from the oceans.

Of course, he clearly doesn't really understand what Letters of Marque are all about. He thinks they're used by pirate hunters, when in reality they were used by pirates. It's piracy with a veneer of respectability that only matters when you go back to home waters. If France were at war with Spain, then France would issue civilian vessels letters saying "we won't consider it Piracy if you raid Spanish ships". Likewise, if the US issues letters vs Somalia, it'll mean US ships will start arming up, and sailing around Africa attacking any ship that "looked like a pirate" or sailed a Somali flag. If you start issuing such letters again, you'll be increasing, not decreasing, the number of individuals engaging in piratical behavior in the ocean.

But, since it would mean more opportunities to wear me dandy coat and little pants, I'd be a'for it. Maybe that's Ron Paul's angle on this as well. -->

Obfuscating Bastards

At first, I was all excited at the news that the CIA has declassified a bunch of information about Area 51. I happily gobbled up the LA Times article.

And the quintessential Area 51 conspiracy—that the Pentagon keeps captured alien spacecraft there, which they fly around in restricted airspace? Turns out that one's pretty easy to debunk. The shape of OXCART was unprece-dented, with its wide, disk-like fuselage designed to carry vast quantities of fuel.

Turns out the LA Times article is pretty easy to debunk as well. It claims OXCART was this super-secret Lockheed A-12, and that it's "disk-like" shape would make people think it was a flying saucer. The article concludes that these recent declassified revelations all but put the nail in the coffin of Conspiracy Theory.

Except that:

1. The A-12 isn't disk-shaped. It's shaped like the SR-71 Blackbird (and the lesser-known YF-12 Interceptor, which actually uses an A-12 chassis). It's only disk-shaped at all if it's coming straight at you. That certainly can't be the angle of most UFO sightings, especially since it flies at Mach 3 - if it was coming straight at you from a distance close enough to see with the naked eye, it'd probably hit you before you or the pilot could react.
2. Even if it was a top-secret disk-shaped craft, which it isn't, that does nothing to explain away the bulk of UFO sightings. Many involve cigar-shaped or triangular craft (admittedly, the SR-71 / A-12 do have a triangular section), often passing overhead at low altitudes and slow speeds, or hovering in place eerily in ways the OXCART isn't capable of. A gleam in the sky passing overhead too quickly to focus on is pretty tame by UFO sighting standards.
3. The A-12 wasn't actually secret until declassified in 2007, as the article claims. There was one on display at a museum in Minneapolis until 2007. There's photos of the A-12 all over the net. What's been declassified since 2007 is just that the CIA used this plane to fly over Russia and China, and the details of an A-12 crash in 1963.

Seems the Times didn't do the research it should have, or, it's actively complicit in obscuring the truth for/with the government. I don't know which.

Irretrievable Easter Egg

Thank you Brad for sharing how to make an irretrievable Easter egg.

Listen to Your Lawyer

During a chat with my lawyer I mentioned that she was far cooler in high school than she gives herself credit for. And the same was true for myself. It's just that nobody points this shit out until it's too late for you to make full use of your pussy attracting potential.

My lawyer counseled me that I still had a lot of pussy attracting potential.

She was right. The pregnant twenty-something cashier at the liquor store was flirting with me mercilessly. That takes some major chutzpah. It also makes a lot of sense. If a guy will take you up on your flirting when you're seven months along, he'll probably put up with just about anything.

Either that or you'll find yourself with a preggers fetishist. Which I am not. I wanted to make this NSFW and add a graphic, but quickly decided I didn't want to look through the image search results.

Going to Minnesota

Blasphemy of the Day

Bullshit

While typically one has to summarize news articles to make them fit for Repated Expletives: this one came ready made.

AIG Exec Whines About Public Anger, and Now We're Supposed to Pity Him? Yeah, Right | AlterNet

DeSantis has a few major points. They include: 1) I had nothing to do with my boss Joe Cassano's toxic credit default swaps portfolio, and only a handful of people in our unit did; 2) I didn't even know anything about them; 3) I could have left AIG for a better job several times last year; 4) but I didn't, staying out of a sense of duty to my poor, beleaguered firm, only to find out in the end that; 5) I would be betrayed by AIG senior management, who promised we would be rewarded for staying, but then went back on their word when they folded in highly cowardly fashion in the face of an angry and stupid populist mob.

I have a few responses to those points. They are 1) Bullshit; 2) bullshit; 3) bullshit, plus of course; 4) bullshit. Lastly, there is 5) Boo-Fucking-Hoo.

Hoo-Fucking-Rah!

Anyone got any Farting UFOs on film?

YouTube has decided that I like UFOs and farting:

Other Interesting Videos

* low altitude ufo sighting in south of france - clear shot
* UFO Sighting in Yosemite Park near Area 51
* Pi Li MIT [霹靂MIT] - The Clue Collector - EP 01 PART 1/10 ENG SUB
* Larry King Farts: LIVE
* Regis Farts

I blame Audie.

Found Music

Follow this link to a series of seven very cool music videos. What makes them so interesting is that music was made by some dude who downloaded and mixed snippets of music from youtube. It's the musical equivalent of found object sculpture.

I think this one is my favorite, but they're all pretty neat.

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Completely unrelated to the rest of this post: My folks arrive in town tomorrow, so for the next week and a half I may post less frequently than normal on this and other blogs.

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The Upscale Subdivision is a Harsh Mistress

So it isn't a lunar colony, but at nearly 4500 square feet on one and a half acres, Robert Heinlein's former home in Colorado Springs might make a suitable location for an experiment in group marriage.

I figure it's bigger than all of our current homes combined, and I'm sure we can bargain the seller down from $650K in the current housing market. However, I doubt my partner would be interested in such a domestic arrangement.

Busting Up Banks

If you want to go to a loosely organized demonstration...

If you want to chant like a zombie...

If you want the FBI noting your presence...

If you really think that the banks should be broken up and redistributed by the government...

A New Way Forward



I still would rather just ban the Fed.

But some people are into that kind of thing.

NASA Infiltrated by Hipsters?

I think I'm going to be sick.

First Look at the Spacecraft That Will Take Humans to Mars - Orion spaceship

If this saucer shape looks familiar, that's not because this vehicle is based on something hidden in Area 51. Orion is based on the design of the Apollo spaceships that took humans to the Moon back in the 1960s. But Orion can carry 6 astronauts, twice as many as Apollo could.

I really wanted this to be an April Fool's prank. After spending the last five years near Portland's hipper neighborhoods, I'm so fucking sick of retro.

Worst Bailout Response

In response to the previous post by my esteemed colleague Mr. Bergstrom.

The key line in this video for me is, "If these companies are too big to fail, they're too big to exist."

If the automakers are too important to disappear, perhaps we should put them in some sort of auto preserve, like those living history villages where people still churn butter by hand as fat retirees in khaki shorts and black socks take photos.

If newspapers are too important to disappear, perhaps we should put them in some sort of news media preserve where they can give daily demonstrations of how printing used to be done. Little children can come away with a copy of the New York Times that has their name in the headline.

If banks are too important to disappear, maybe we should lock them in a vault so nobody can get to them. Preferably a hermetically sealed one.

Worst bailout proposal yet

As bad as the idea of giving more money to corporate robber barons is, there's still the possibility for these bailouts to get even worse.

"As recently as last week, Democrats in Congress were discussing the wrinkles of a proposed bailout for struggling newspapers like the Times.
...

Business Week suggested wiping out newspapers' debt or subsidizing news digitization through a government-run purchasing program backed by Amazon's Kindle."

As if the major media weren't already a tool of the power elite, now we're talking about having the government pay off their debts. You think maybe they'd be unlikely to ever criticize said government again? Why not establish a new cabinet-level position called the Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, while we're at it?

Never mind, I should quit my bitching. I'm 8 years late and several trillion dollars short. The major media is already beholden to the evil secret masters of the corporate state. More bribes from (or for) the power structure won't have an impact on their non-existent journalistic integrity. Instead, it's obvious that there's only one real problem with this plan, or at least only one real problem that John Q. Public will give a rat's ass about:

"But really, would you want to be forced into buying a Kindle just so a poorly managed daily paper on the other side of the country can continue to pay it's gossip columnist and Ann Coulter's syndication fee? I don't."

Perish the thought. That would be a real freakin' tragedy.

I'm not to worried about it, though. The Federal Government couldn't manage to get the majority of us to redeem coupons for free converter boxes on our all-important television sets by the time the first deadline for that came and went. How the hell does anyone think they can motivate us to all buy some kinda fancified readin' doohickey?


(quotes from Raw)

Uncomfortable

Sometimes when I go to the strip club I see new talent. It can be a lot of fun to see the new girls and make predictions about their varied potentials. I remember one gal in particular who had amazing dancing talent. I said that night, "If she can learn to incorporate a few traditional stripper moves with that, she'll be amazing." Next time I saw her she had done exactly that and was beyond amazing.

Yesterday I saw the other side of that coin. There was a young gal with a very beautiful body. Her moves were terrible. At one point she tried to get down on her hands and knees and shake her ass.

She looked like a dog with the dry heaves. She needs to take a week or two off and dance. Learn how her body moves. She honestly would have done better to just stand and pose.

Lucky for me the gal afterwards moved with a grace that defied gravity.

Mind Control Robots

Had to double-check the date on this one, but it predates April Fools, so it seems to be legit.

Honda has new non-invasive brain-machine-interface technology:

TOKYO, Japan, March 31, 2009 - Honda Research Institute Japan Co., Ltd. (HRI-JP), a subsidiary of Honda R&D Co., Ltd., Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR) and Shimadzu Corporation have collaboratively developed the world’s first^*1 Brain Machine Interface (BMI) technology that uses electroencephalography (EEG) and near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) along with newly developed information extraction technology to enable control of a robot by human thought alone. It does not require any physical movement such as pressing buttons. This technology will be further developed for the application to human-friendly products in the future by integrating it with intelligent technologies and/or robotic technologies.

...

♦ About BMI
While conventional machine-interface uses devices such as switches which need to be operated by a user’s hands or feet, BMI uses brain activity data measured by various devices and enables non-contact control of the machines (such as robots). Invasive BMI, which is widely studied by U.S. and European researchers, requires the surgical implant of electrode arrays, whereas non-invasive BMI uses sensors touching the user’s scalp.

My evil plan is almost to fruition. The world will quake and cower when my army of psychic robots invades every home. I'd been considering this for a long time, but was previously held by by fear of losing humanity points when they install my neuroware processor. Now I can dominate humanity without loss of humanity.

Best of the Day

Adolf Hitler confirmed to have lived in Argentina until 1957

Some conspiracy theorists place Hitler in the center of various plots aimed at toppling the US government. In actuality however his life could not be any more different. The post-war profile of Hitler that the profile FBI released had him raising chickens and planting cabbage for a living. 'Herr Schmidt' as he came to be known made the best sauerkraut in town. An older village resident remembered that 'Herr Schmidt fed his chickens in the courtyard every morning right after dawn making clucking noises as he threw feed onto the ground. Sometimes when he saw me he would run back into the house and return with a jar of sauerkraut as a gift.' Another resident shared that Hitler sometimes performed scenes from Tristan and Isolde under the full moon in front of the chicken shack to a poultry audience. The folks in town seemed to think of 'Herr Schmidt' as a strange man but all agree that they put up with him because his sauerkraut was so delicious.

Yes, we are all aware of the Argentinians' famed love of sauerkraut.

Happy 60th