Not a few pics

I'll get to those later. Seriously, I took so many that it will take awhile for me to sort out the bad ones that make up 95% of the roll.

Instead here are some more random links to stuff I find interesting.


How much LSD does it take to kill an elephant? No, it's not a joke. Aren't you glad I find these gems for you? On second thought, that's a bummer of an article, so you should skip it.


This couldn't sum up my feelings on working for a large company any better. It's so true. I took my motorcycle class in the parking lot of one of Boeing's countless instances out here. Knowing a thing or two about defense contractors, it was eerie just looking at the familiar too bland squarish unwindowed buildings.

At the entrance to the compound there's a nice attractive building with mirrored windows and a splashy Boeing logo across it. A kid in the class wondered why the disparity and I told him, "That's where the management works. It's so they can remind the employees everyday, twice, that they're expendable cogs in a wheel." It's too bad he laughed. He'll need that bit of wisdom eventually.


File this one under my ineffable wisdom: today I bought new better socks and threw out my old crappy ones. What makes this news is that the old ones had no visible holes in them, I just didn't like them anymore. It only took me 29 years to reach this level of sophistication. Next: underwear. (don't rush me!)


This is all the garbage I have for you today. Have a great weekend!

Oh ok, here's one pic for ya (like you really care anyway)

Happy three day weekend!

I'd hate to leave that bummer of a post up top for the whole weekend, so here's some random stuff for your amusement.


I got in a car wreck Thursday. Fortunately everyone is fine, though my poor passenger side door took a helluva beating. I think the other guy was clearly at fault; he thinks I was. Such is life. I'm just glad no one was hurt. It sure put the kibosh on my plans to buy a motorcycle though.


I'm going camping with JB at Hell's Canyon this weekend. It looks amazing. I'll be sure to take a bunch of pictures and I'll put a few of them up here.


This is a really good short story by Issac Asimov, sci-fi legend. It's his own personal favorite, and with good reason. I would give you a hint as to what it's about, but since it's so short, I don't want to give anythying away. Go ye and read. You didn't want to go to that meeting anyway.


This is what most fans would consider the best Grateful Dead bootleg of all time. It got regular play in my car back in the day, though my day was roughly 20 years after this recording was made (I wasn't even born yet). All classics performed flawlessly. Everyone has their own favorite, but I was always partial to Scarlet Begonias (Jerry didn't sing most of the songs, but he pulls this one off beautifully IMO).

Once in a while you get shown the light
In the strangest of places if you look at it right

Hell fuckin' yeah!


This is a fascinating story about the inner workings of car dealers. It's long, but worth it. It's a must for anyone planning on buying a car soon.


This video of a water balloon hitting the ground and not busting is surprisingly entertaining. Oh go look anyway, trust me. It's short (~30 sec).


And finally, this is an interesting mashup of Slayton highlights put to a rap about how great West Virginia is. If that means anything to you, it's exactly what it sounds like. You probably don't want to click this one, but you'll find the song amusing if you do. The name of the rapper, the greatest rap name of all time: Profit Money.

Yup. It's that good.


When I was at Enterprise renting a car (that my insurance is paying for) a rail thin girl showed up to return a car. Fascinated by her tininess that definitely wasn't vomit induced (you can just tell sometimes when someone is naturally emaciated), I listened in to her conversation. This isn't any weirder than staring at a hobbit. She discussed the weather report with the guy behind the counter and I couldn't help interjecting that they're always wrong anyway, so just look out the window.

She replied, from her abnormally large mouth, that no way does she trust the media to get the weather right, she goes straight to the mothah effin' gub'mint! And then she mentioned some site that I forget.

Um... what? Granted I'm a complete moron, but that goes against everything my black libertarian heart stands for. The government more trustworthy than private industry that is accountable for its actions? She could be right in this case, since private industry will do whatever garners them the highest profit, and that could induce them to embellish less than threatening weather. It's just not my default. Maybe this is why I don't hit it off with the uber-left girls out here on the west coast.


I shocked the nice wife of a friend of a friend I met randomly by saying I wouldn't be attracted to a woman who believes in astrology. I should have known better than to say something like that in Portland, but it's true. My overriding thought would be, how did I end up with such an idiot? But it's really not that important in the grand scheme of things. Love, loyalty, shared interests: those are what really matter. So in the end, is it really that different than believing in Jesus or aliens? Perhaps, but not by much. Overlookable, surely.

The point is thin sexy girls are insane, especially when they show no interest in me.


Have a great weekend everybody! Don't forget to thank a veteran. And of course, don't forget to snarf on animal carcasses whilst swilling the brew of your choice.

America, fuck yeah!

Treason?

I don't usually go for the wartalk here (which is what I always say right before I launch into the wartalk). If you've checked the news recently you probably saw this about Bush authorizing covert action to destabilize Iran.

The usual cadre of right wingers are busy wadding their panties into a bunch, and not wholly without cause. Left wingers use it as more evidence for eeeeevil Bush (I know this because I briefly perused a few sites, therefore I know all). I won't link to either side, but I'm not going to say I don't care which side is closer to correct.

One thing I find very interesting is that no one is surprised. At all. Some even say things like, we weren't doing that already? (I assume we were) I think very few people, left or right, want to see Iran's current government survive, though certainly there are differences about how to go about changing it, and some question whether we ought to interfere at all.


I'm also interested in whether or not this amounts to treason, as some suggest. I think there's more than likely a clearcut legal case to be made against the intelligence official(s) who leaked the info. I'm sure whoever it was took an oath and signed his/her name such that leaking secret documents is clearly illegal (treason is another, much more serious matter that could bring the death penalty). The reporter(s) who broke the story probably did nothing illegal, just immoral, and possibly committed treason (if anyone knows for sure, I'd love to read your comments).

Treason though? That's a tall order Nordburg. The founding fathers specifically defined treason in the Constitution so as to make it very hard to convict someone of it, a reaction to abuse by British monarchs. Since then amendments have been added to make it easier to convict people for sedition or espionage, which are basically the same thing. I'm not going to pretend to know where this lies exactly, but I can take the broad definition of treason -- disloyalty to one's country -- and see that what the intelligence official(s) and the reporter(s) have done appears to be treason, in the non-legally binding sense.

I support the press's right to break a story that reveals the contents of secret documents, but use some discretion. If you found a secret document that detailed how to make plutonium out of common household chemicals, would you report it? In this case, you can't deny that what they did is akin to "giving ... aid and comfort" to an enemy (article 3, section 3). At least I can't deny that. It's maybe not treason by our laws, but it's borderline. It probably falls under either sedition or espionage.

I support the press's right in the same way I support the KKK's right to say racist bullshit, which is to say, my eyebrow is raised skeptically. If the KKK nutjob starts to incite violence, such as burning a cross, he's gone too far. If the reporter aids an enemy we might as well be at war with, they've gone too far.

They used poor judgment by assisting the Iranian government. I am forced to question their loyalty. Is there another way to see this that I'm missing? Because this about as obvious as screwing banshees.

Clearly there's a public interest argument to be made, but I find it dubious considering the covert nature of the mission. I suppose the motivation could be to simply make Bush look bad, but I find even that level of BDS unlikely. Maybe it was deliberately leaked for some reason, perhaps to put pressure on Iran right before our two governments meet for the first time since what... 1979? And I suppose Iran knows better than anybody when foreign agents are trying to foment rebellion within their own borders. So this may not be as big a deal as it seems.


That's enough about treason.


I'll bring this up again just because I still find this the most fascinating part of the story: war with Iran seems to be a forgone conclusion, and our (American) collective reaction seems to be... eh. Does anyone else pick up that (disturbing) vibe? I think another unilateral (bi if you count Britain) invasion would be a disaster, which could be mitigated by a newly rightwing France and Germany possibly coming on board, but that's not the point. The point is the real wars haven't yet begun. The big event that changed the world and how we live that we all said was 9/11? It hasn't happened yet.



Boy, what a downer. Pleasant dreams everyone. This came out a little bleaker than I intended. You should forget about it and go back to sleep (I will too). I am interested in your thoughts about this though, so maybe put off the nap a little bit.


In lighter news, amuse yourself with some lolcats. They make me feel better anyway. I said "You haz mah buckit!" to someone the other day and no one got it but me (welcome to my world). At least I laughed about it.

Sopranos

Discuss the third to last episode in the comments, which starts on the west coast in about 15 minutes.

I promise I'll blog about something other than TV or links to videos someday, but don't hold your breath.

Caveman

The caveman's apartment flash thing is somewhat amusing.

ST:TNG

I know this is a repeat, but if you even vaguely recall Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes, you have to read these recaps by Wil Wheaton (Wesley Crusher). They don't come out nearly fast enough, but they're worth the wait.

Sopranos open thread

Spoilers in comments (not that anyone does that anymore).

UPDATE: Link to good articles about the show, thanks be to JB.

Happy Mother's Day

According to this, Mother's Day started in Grafton, West Virginia in 1908, a scant hours drive from where I grew up. Why weren't we taught that in WV history class?

Oh, and everyone in WV is inbred and stupid, just like you think. Hyuk! Hyuk! Aren't you glad I saved you from making a stale joke?

You're Welcome

Technically this pic is borderline worksafe, but you owe it to yourself to check it out. This is my service to you, dear reader.

Game over

This youtube of Mario's epilogue is hilarious. There's a bit of bleeped language, but otherwise it's safe for work.

I suppose the fact that I giggled through the whole thing makes me a big huge dork.

Did I mention the drive-thru?

Happy Friday everyone! Here's a great ws way to kill some down time at your job today (youtube).

BTW, take any chance you get to see Weird Al live. You won't be disappointed, though keep in mind there will be alot of kids there.

Keep looking up

This phenomenon is called an analemma. The sun was photographed from the same position every day (or some multiple thereof) for a year.