Infinite Monkeys
"...a sparkly blog..." - James Lileks"Read them only with extreme caution."- Hugh Hewitt
Infinite MonkeysVia Local Liberty:
It looks like the Democratic Party controlled California Assembly has brought low-flow toilet theory to education.
Assembly Bill 756 (former teacher Jackie Goldberg) would limit school textbooks (through 12th Grade) to a maximum 200 pages. It doesn't matter the subject - math, English, Science, History, etc., or the grade level. 200 pages. That's it.
I am by no means well-informed on edumakashun issues, so I hope somebody with an educational background and an upper crust establishment first name might be able to explain why in god's name this is a good idea? The Bill contains none of the typical phony justifications for this nonsense, and Goldberg's rationale (as stated in The Sacramento Bee) that the books should contain a massive index so kids can use the internet to encourage them to find things out for themselves seems, well, silly.
So why 200 page?
According to the Sacramento Bee (I hate the Bee, by the way), "The Association of American Publishers opposes the bill, saying the arbitrary 200-page limit could force publishers to produce multiple volumes to cover the state's content standards."
Yep. Why have one book, when two or three will do? Kind of like flushing a low-flow toilet. Why one flush when two or three will do the same thing? In the end, it's more expensive, less convenient, and just as burdensome.
I blame MTV.
Something very weird is happening in Tennessee.
Update: Lots of news here. (HT: InstaPundit)
I don't know why I found this to be so funny. But I did. Does that make me a bad person?
Yeah, I thought so.
I had told myself that I would start out slow and not get caught up trying to keep up with the big boys in the lead pack while we were in the flats before the climbs began. Well, as we left the neutral area and rolled out on the 88, Greg, the organizer from Landis, rolled by and said, "Hey, Brad. The race is in the front, not in the back. Come on up." And like an idiot, I followed him. Before I knew it, I was in that little single-file paceline at the front, with only four guys ahead of me, about 35 behind. About the time I started thinking that I had completely abandoned my strategy for a couple minutes of pointless glory, Greg leaped off the front and boosted the pace. Arghh!
I decided to just hold my rhythm and let the field pass me until the speed settled and I would settle in a more sane part of the pack. That was working when Stephen, a national Cat 1/Pro from Landis passed me and called out, "Get in a better gear, Brad!" It wasn't until two hours later that I had a chance to talk with him in the parking lot that I could get his advice about how I was spinning too fast for that situation, and ought to have have a lower cadence with which I could react and jump better without shifting.
I stuck with the group just a few hundred yards longer than last week once the climbs started. As the first downhill began, I was ahead of a handful, who had dropped off the lead pack before the climbs, and with one other guy. During one of the first descents, I felt my back wheel sway out from underneath me, but didn't put two and two together, since it didn't look flat. But as we came down the last few really tight turns toward the lake, it fishtailed out really severely and even felt wobbly after I'd straightened out. Obviously, I had a flat. Mile nine, and I had a flat.
While changing the flat, I broke another SpeedLever. I couldn't find the exact hole in my tube, so I had to pump it up over and over and over. I assumed it was a pinhole and may have come from a small puncture. I never could find anything in my tire so, pouring sweat, I went ahead and began the wrestling match of remounting the Gatorskins.
Somewhere during the process, I dropped the wheel and it landed square on the quick release lever. No biggie, I thought. But later in the process, I noticed an odd gap between my skewer and the hub body. As a result of the impact, it was all out of whack and it kept the wheel from fitting into the rear dropouts. After much maneuvering, I was able to wrestle the derailleur out of the way and force the wheel into the gap. Some experimenting finally showed me that a series of tightening the quick release would close that gap a little at a time. Eventually, I was able to retighten the skewer enough times to fully eliminate the gap and keep the hub tight in the dropouts.
By this time, my chain had not only fallen off, but somehow doubled over on itself and kinked.That was a joy of greasy pinches to straighten out. Getting back started on the uphill grade, I dropped the chain of the front chainring and nearly fell over to the one side I had already clipped in on.
I rode alone, trying to get some training miles in, after what must have been a 15 or 20 minute delay in my "race." Oddly, not far past Tortilla Flat, Cub and a couple others flew by, obviously having turned around early. I never did find out why they abandoned the race. But I wanted to get in more of a ride than that, so I kept climbing.
In the pre-race instructions, Greg had made a point of asking folks who got dropped badly to turn around short of the real turnaround point, so he wouldn't have to be there until long after dark waiting for and wondering about stragglers who hadn't checked in. Greg also happened to be in the lead group of three who passed me on their way back. I hoped they would realize that I must have had a mechanical issue, and was just stretching my legs. But the tone in Greg's voice was rather patronizing when he flew by and called out, "Just turn around, Brad."
Well, no. I wouldn't turn around. Not there, anyway. I knew I'd never make it to the mile 19 and get back in time, but I was going to keep going until I saw some folks more my speed I could ride back with in hopes of pacing well, adding a little challenge. It was painful to imagine that all of the fastest riders, now passing me going the other way, might be thinking that I was really just that slow, unaware of my time-sucking mechanical. My pride was damaged, but I was determined not to let such vain concerns rob me of the chhance to get something beneficial out of my entry fee and all the time I spent preparing for the day's ride. I had hoped to keep going until I found Russ, who came in one place ahead of me last week, but by the 16.2 mark on my computer, just a corner or two away from the beginning of the worst section of climbing, and the sun getting low, I found the nicest little spot to turn around...
I caught up with a few guys on the way back, having fresher legs than most. Eventually, it turned into a group of about 8 or 9. I even began leading. But as we were coming out of the lake area, in the final climbs, I reached to swap bottles from my rear jersey pocket to my cage. As i pulled the bottle out, a guy behind me said, "Hey, bud, I think you just dropped some money." Somebody else said they thought it was a gel pack, but I knew I had a $10 bill in one of those pockets. Since I knew it wouldn't be right for me to contest the finish against any of those folks, I went ahead and peeled off, went back, and found that I had indeed dropped... the wrapper from a ZonePerfect bar I had eaten during warm up. Well, at least I was no litter bug.
But that killed my momentum. I was never able to catch up. After a while,I relaxed, letting up a bit in the downhill. Since I hadn't found anything in my tire, I worried every time I took a hard corner, or felt repeating bumps from expansion cracks in the road. Oddly, though...just this morning, as I entered my race data into my log, I noticed that I set another new personal top speed record: 44.4 mph. When did that happen?
Anyway, I'm off to family camp. I bought a hitch mount bike carrier, so I'll be taking up our bikes. It's supposed to be in some steep mountains, so maybe I'll come back to the Tortilla Flat series and find it a cakewalk.The more likely scenario is that I'll be back next week, battling Chris and Russ for 16th or 18th in the B Race.
First, I read that James Lileks is seriously considering moving to Phoenix.
Then, that a monkey is praying.
I'm about to pass out, so I'm sure all the monkeys here will address these things tomorrow. Let me just say, let's prepare the way boys. For the next four years, we'll be working to make sure Arizona is ready for James Lileks. Maybe we can even help him find a job. Say, isn't a Senate seat available in Arizona in five years?
In fact, I'm willing to leave San Diego and move to Phoenix in a few months to begin the planning.
Watching Bryan Ferry of Roxy Music move and groove to his own song, I am unable to convince myself that I'm not seeing a giant version of the reverse-dancing dwarf (The Man From Another Place) in Twin Peaks' Waiting Room to the Black Lodge/White Lodge.
Tivo + digital cable + Vh1 Classic's "We Are The 80's" = Wow, Bob, Wow.
On the surface, it's easy to get caught up in the partisan howls. It's as if Shaq started passing the ball to the other team! As if Eisenhower had given Rommel the D-Day plans!
But this partisan view of the world is exactly what our founders didn't want. Senators, in particular, should be thoughtful and vote the way they believe, not the way the party tells them to.
Having said all that, I'm not quite sure what McCain, in particular, thought he was up to. I think Hugh is right that this probably dooms McCain's chance of winning the GOP presidential nomination, but that was pretty unlikely anyway. I also think--know, really--that Professor Bainbridge is right that preserving the filibuster is the more classically conservative move.
The truth is that there are few classical conservatives left in Congress. There are few classical anythings--modern politics favors the extreme, the politically demagogic, and those who kowtow to special interests. To attack the Republicans who signed on to this deal as traitors misses the point: that group of Senators are themselves the minority voice, and diminishing their power (and let's face it, this fight wasn't going to be contained to judicial nominees) diminished their own power to reign in the wackos.
So while the sight of Senator Byrd happy always makes me queasy, I'm with Glenn Reynolds that it's hard to care about that when what we're talking about is two sides who both want to expand Federal power and interfere more in the lives of individuals. If it's a battle to get Alex Kozinski on the bench, call me. Otherwise, I'm not going to get too worked up about it.
The second best site about TeeVee (I'll let you look over to the links on the right to find the best one) is Laurel's TV Picks. The main reason I'm linking is that her fiancé is looking for software engineering work in the Twin Cities, and I know some of our readers live there. But I'm also linking because she has the best coverage of the next TV season, as well as amazingly comprehensive daily TV picks.
(By the way, for more on the upcoming season, detailed write-ups have begun here. I'm really looking forward to the one about Fox.)
Big news from capitol hill: The Republicans are spineless.
Hindrocket is apoplectic. The Republican Cheerleader-in-Chief is trying desperately to avoid a crisis of faith.
I have two words for those who are surprised at the Republicans' ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory: Well, duh.
(apologies to James Taranto for the post title)
Update: The freakout continues. Here are Mitch, Captain Ed, and Conservative Outpost doing their best take on, "You Klingon bastards! You killed my son!"
Hey, don't blame me. I voted for Cthulhu.
Update 2: Here's a really nice round-up of blogger reaction from Myopic Zeal. I know it's excellent because it includes us. ;-)
Wal-Mart is evil. I'll post more on this in the future, but they simply are, and the fact that I'm a free market capitalist makes me hate them more, not less (a lot of big corporations use their power to subvert the free market and manipulate governments, and Wal-Mart is one of the worst).
But today, a small victory: Wal-Mart, who had ripped off Netflix's DVD rental idea to create their own service (even stealing the design and look of the packaging), has surrendered and is sending customers to Netflix (there's a banner ad for Wal-Mart at Netflix now, so that's probably part of the deal--but still, a victory for the innovators).
Wal-Mart probably just couldn't figure out how to have people in Communist China do the work.
Update: I should have also linked to this excellent piece by Professor Bainbridge on why Wal-Mart is a devil.
You know what? I didn't like Pepsi anyway. Coke all the way. If I'm at a restaurant that serves Pepsi products, I order iced tea.
Speaking of which, the Splenda-sweetened Diet Coke is now available in 2-Litre bottles at grocery stores all over Phoenix (at least). AND, Coke is now promoting the product on the Diet Coke website. Yeeeeehaw!
UPDATE: David suggested I link to one of the stories about what I am calling "PepsiGate" - so here's Lileks's Bleat on the subject. He links to a PDF of the entire speech. By the way, I agree with James 100% on the ice-on-demand issue. "Cradle of democracy" my ass...
Via Michelle Malkin:
Self-important dumbass Mr. Gwynneth Paltrow of the "music" group Coldplay thinks that "shareholders are the great evil of this modern world." Mr. Paltrow objected to the "the slavery that we are all under to shareholders".
"Slavery.? The sonofabitch's "band" sells 20 million albums worlwide, he's undoubtedly a f**king millionaire becaue of the "slaveholders", I mean shareholders, and he likens it to slavery?
Dude, a little perspective maybe? Maybe you don't like sacrificing your "art" to the evils of the corporate world, but to characterize your fame and fortune as "slavery" is beyond idiotic.
Jerk.
Via that kid Goldberg at NRO's The Corner:
A really, really cool new toy.
The Dread Weapon System. (Invented by the Dread Pirate Roberts?)
*Fires .308 caliber and .50 caliber metal projectiles accurately at up to 8,000 fps (feet-per-second)
*Features an infinitely variable/programmable cyclic rate-of-fire (as high as 120,000 rounds-per-minute) [that is so cooool]
*Electrically powered and virtually silent
*Capable of laying down a 360-degree field of fire
*Mountable on any military vehicles, includes humvees and helicopters
*Weighs only 28 pounds
*Magazine capacities of at least 50,000 rounds of .308 Cal., or 10,000 rounds of .50 Cal. ammo
This ain't no Treo, I'll tell ya that.
I'm testing out blogging from my Treo using HBlogger. It should allow me to post poorly proofread blog entries much more often!
[Posted with hblogger 2.0 http://www.normsoft.com/hblogger/]
Hmmmm.....
 | You scored as Cultural Creative. Cultural Creatives are probably the newest group to enter this realm. You are a modern thinker who tends to shy away from organized religion but still feels as if there is something greater than ourselves. You are very spiritual, even if you are not religious. Life has a meaning outside of the rational.
What is Your World View? (corrected...hopefully) created with QuizFarm.com |
Yeah, I don't know about this one. If nothing else, I would have expected a lower score for "Modernist" and at least slightly higher for "Existentialist" - but I don't know about this "Culture Creative" title. Anybody heard that one before?
Okay, a little analysis:
>You scored as Cultural Creative. Cultural Creatives are probably
>the newest group to enter this realm.
Say what now?
>You are a modern thinker who tends to shy away from organized
>religion but still feels as if there is something greater than ourselves.
Bzzzzt. I'm a Presbyterian (PCA). Go to church pretty much every week, and I have all my life. I expect organized religion to be flawed and corrupt because it's run by sinners like me, but I still believe the Church is an institution established by the One True God.
>You are very spiritual, even if you are not religious.
Actually, more the opposite. I think contemporary warm-and-fuzzy "spirituality" is a blanket people wear to try to keep from feeling the deep-down cold in the center of their being. Yes, I put the blanket on sometimes, too. But it doesn't keep me warm.
>Life has a meaning outside of the rational.
Eh. I sure wouldn't put it that way. I'd rather quote old Bill, "There is more to heaven and earth, Horatio, than is dreamt of in your philosophy."
I was never a BMX bike rider, but I did find a track in the desert near my house when I was a kid. I used to go out there alone and speed around the course, racing against phantom competitors. Monkey David and I even used to ride through the undeveloped land behind his parents' house in Litchfield Park, AZ. We loved riding the little hills and mounds, sometimes acting like motorcyclists, sometimes making the riding a part of adventurous imaginary scenarios. If I remember right, I was on a Mongoose and he was on a motorcycle-seated Huffy. It could be that I still had my Schwinn model that was somewhere in between a cruiser and a Sting-Ray. That bike had gone from shiny red and traditional to grey with a plastic fake gas tank, motorcycle seat, and a few other accessories designed to give it a motorcycle feel.
David and I rode with neighbors, laying out flat on the seats, sticking our feet out over the handlebars, standing on the seat, etc. During summers with my cousins in Texas, I would repeatedly sprint toward the edge of a corn field, stand up on the sadddle, zip up the raised edge of the irrigation ditch,and once at the apex, and extend my legs, launching myself off the crashing bike into a flight over the shrubs and into the tilled earth. Flipping over handlebars, skid length competitions, and assertions like, "I meant to do that," were regular parts of our existence.
These memories came back to me as I watched certain scenes of a new documentary called Joe Kid On A Sting-Ray. (It might be hard to notice the link to the trailer.) If you're an X-er, I doubt you'll be able to get through it without at least one "oh, yeah..." experience. Obviously, few of us got beyond the board & milk crate tricks, but seeing the 16mm footage and the dearth of banana seats and sissy bars, it was just startlingly reminiscent.
Hey, Lileks thinks tripe is fish.
I wouldn't point this out--after all, he makes clear that the Bleat is quickly written, so pointing out errors is unfair (like shooting tripe in a barrel)--but I've been thinking lately about the nature of errors. You know why.
What's the responsibility for serious errors? Should the level of responsibility vary by a) how influential the publication is and/or b) how much the publication (or part of the publication) makes claims for accuracy?
The "b)" point is that I suspect that Newsweek takes those little short blurb sections less seriously, though they should not.
The old cliché about shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater doesn't really apply here, exactly. If you shout "Fire!" when you really believe there is a fire, is that wrong? I'm sure you would be sued by those injured in the panic in that case, but clearly it's much worse if you do it knowing that you are lying.
In this case, the fundamental issue is that people tend to be less skeptical of things they are already inclined to believe. Go to Snopes to see a bunch of examples. To an atheist, the idea that people would believe that a major corporation supports Satanism is ridiculous. But that same person might believe that Bush is planning a religious takeover.
The key point is that journalists need to be skeptical of everything. That's their job.
Two additional points:
First, the way NPR reported this story yesterday was ridiculous. The report said that Newsweek had retracted the story, but that human rights activists had statements from former detainees that "showed" that the Koran had been desecrated. What the hell? Statements don't "show" things, they claim it. You need more evidence than that to make such an inflammatory statement on national radio, especially when you're reporting a retraction. I can't believe taxpayer money is paying for such poor reporting.
Second, tripe is stomach lining. Maybe Lileks knew that, and was just trying to spare Gnat a reality more horrible than wet rocks.
UPDATE: Here's a good take on the same subject.
Huzzah! The Supreme Court has recognized our Constitutional right to drink quality wine in Arizona (and any other state) without having to sneak it across the border. A toast to the Supreme Court!!!
(Hat tip: Hit and Run. Visit there for links to the complete ruling.
Monkey Brad has inspired me to pull the old bike out of the garage yesterday and hit the road to good health and physical fitness.
Sunday
7:30 a.m.: Roll out of bed. Damn, it's early. Cold too. Looks like rain. Can ride in this.
9:45 a.m.: Roll out of bed (again). Where's the sun? Bastards!
11:00 a.m.: Dog wants out. Dammit. Roll out of bed. May as well get damn bike out.
11:15 a.m.: Back car out of garage to move crap out from around bike.
11:20 a.m.: Move boxes of books that have formed protective fortress around bike. Books are my friends.
11:21 a.m.: Is it too early for a beer?
1:30 p.m.: Finish looking through books I haven't looked at in years.
1:45 p.m.: Pick up empty beer cans.
1:50 p.m.: Why am I doing this again? Oh, that's right, the evil bike. It is now taunting me.
1:45 p.m.: Finally get bike out of garage. Tires flat. Both of them (no, not "all three).
1:46 p.m.: Where is damn air compressor to inflate tires?
1:47 p.m.: Need beer.
2:30 p.m.: Find air compressor under kayak.
2:31 p.m.: I have a kayak?
3:30 p.m.: Give-up trying to put kayak together. I thought I already picked up the empty beer cans?
3:35 p.m.: Wondering what I am doing in the garage anyway. Bike sticks tongue out at me.
4:15 p.m.: Overcoming valiant resistance from air compressor, finally get cords untangled. Deserve beer.
4:16 p.m.: Realize car no longer in garage to plug compressor into lighter. Goddammit.
4:30 p.m.: Put band-aid on knee after tripping over compressor cords while taking bike and compressor and beer out to car. Spill beer too. Bike laughing at me.
5:00 p.m.: Bike tires finally appear inflated. Damn that chain looks dry.
5:10 p.m.: I'm hungry. Thirsty too. Really deserve beer.
5:15 p.m.: Is that rain? It's f**king May 15, and it's raining?
6:00 p.m.: Finally find grease for bike chain. Where the hell is bike? Remember it is outside with car and compressor.
6:30 p.m.: Got grease all over hands and legs. Some actually on bike chain.
6:45 p.m.: Sonofabitch. How'd I cut my hand?
7:00 p.m.: Back outside after replacing bandaid on knee and putting two on hand.
7:15 p.m.: Raining. Really raining. Oh, look. Driver's side car window is open. Marvelous.
7:30 p.m.: Put compressor and bike back in garage. Bike now disgusted with me.
7:40 p.m.: Car back in garage.
7:41 p.m.: Garage door closed.
7:45 p.m.: Reward self with beer.
7:55 p.m.: Oh, cool. Two new Simpsons episodes are on in five minutes.
Jonah Goldberg's take on Law and Order's portrayal of evangelical Christians is a must read.
If you missed last night's Saturday Night Live with Will Ferrell, you missed the best SNL since...well, I almost said since Ferrell left, but this was even better than when he was on, since he was in almost every sketch.
There's still the bad. A half hour into the show, the idiotic recurring "Nuni Nuni" sketch almost ran the show into a wall. But then "Queens of the Stone Age," the musical guests, performed...a pretty good act, but wait...who's the guy with cowbell?
Genius.
The other monkeys have been bugging me to go ahead and blog about my cycling. Okay, here goes... We now join Bike Blogging in progress.
(Below is the text of something I posted to BikeJournal.com's Forum and Bicycling.com's Racing Forum as a follow-up to questions I had asked about how to physiologically maximize my pre-race warm up, specifically before a 40k time trial. In order for you to see the sarcasm of my post in perspective, I'll add some of the real responses to my Forum post question as comments to this blog entry. Cycling can get a bit analytical.)
I appreciate the fact that I got replies to my question about how to warm up effectively, but I have to admit, I'm disappointed in the quality of the advice. The experience I gained in my first 40k TT has shown several holes in the Forum's recommendations.For example:
Somebody could have added to all the heart rate tactics by mentioning that it would all be for nought if I were unable to find a replacement for the dead battery in my HR meter's belt. A reminder strategy and a day planner might have been called for, eh?
No one mentioned that I should mount my race tires and tubes the AFTERNOON before, instead of waiting until after the school awards ceremony that ran long that night. Getting my gear bag packed sometime before midnight might have been a hot tip too.
No one mentioned that I should have replaced my broken Crank Bros. SpeedLever before I tried to mount very tight tires, breaking one of my standard tire levers.
I really could have used a heads up about not driving well past the right freeway exit out in the desert west of Phoenix. You might have mentioned how many more miles I'd have to drive before an exit would let me turn around. Sheesh!
Somebody could have suggested that I not take my bike out of the van to discover that I must have slightly torn my rear tube during the previous night's mounting wrestling match. And nobody warned me not to break my one remaining tire lever trying to dismount the flat tire. And no one said a word about not breaking (within seconds) the tire lever I'd borrow from a competitor.
Not a word about how to calm my nerves as my start time ticked closer and closer and closer while a fourth person joined the battle to remount the tire on my wheel with the new tube. Somebody could have at least warned me of the possibility that it would take leg-stretching the clincher like a sew-up, plus four hands and two more borrowed levers simultaneously to mount the seemingly undersized tire. (Who could have predicted that the salty tandem vet who helped me would claim that it was the tightest fit he'd ever seen?)
I would have appreciated knowing in advance that the race director would ask for riders to meet at a staging area to re-check in a full five minutes before one's start time. Oh, and don't you think I could have been prepared by some knowledgeable soul that the official start clock would be 3-4 minutes fast compared to all of the competitors' watches.
If you people would have warned me that all I'd have time for would be a ride out and back on a 1.7 miles stretch once, a zip through the parking area to gobble a gel, and then the half mile jaunt from the staging area to the starting ramp... well, I'm sure I would have been mentally prepared to turn that into enough of a warm up to bring home the Cat 5 State Champion jersey. (Yeah, that's the ticket.) But the Forum let me down. (wink)
Angels Macaques herald Brad's reemergence. (insert your own joke about the five still missing)
What Monkey Brad comeback would be complete without heavy reliance on acclaimed shock jock Hugh Hewitt? The radio personality announced today that he is contemplating a new direction in his show's promotion via sports sponsorships. Hugh's dismal record features a long list of friends turned scapegoats in the fields of softball and basketball, coupled with his own forays into hockey, fishing, and as long time readers may recall, snowmobiling. Hugh announced that he may move away from church leagues and the lower rank of the city leagues, considering kids' little league, rugby, lacrosse, or a non-profit surfing team.
This could all have been settled long ago, had I interrupted my cycling hiatus to blog on the hottest new sport to sweep the nation's athletically underachieving youth: cup stacking (aka speed stacks. See the videos). Designed for kids whose large-muscle group skills lag far behind their fine motor skills, the "sport" may be a viable alternative for the kids who would normally end up in the self-esteem leagues where scoring and winning are banned. (Oddly though, hard drinking frat boys come to the sport with a noticeably advanced skill-set.) Imagine the Hugh Hewitt Show tee shirts adorning the kids who look like they've taken a wrong turn at the engineering fair concessions garden. These spelling bee refugees are the children of Hewitt's exact demographic group.
If this is a non-starter for Hugh, let me make one other suggestion: Cyclists & Triathletes. Folks like Tri Geek Kahuna and me are already covered with advertising on our jerseys. It's just a part of the sport. All it would take is a little iron-on since the Hugh Hewitt cycling jersey has already been designed.
I was a little surprised to read that Lileks doesn't like bumper stickers. I would have thought he would have at least had an Apple logo on the back of his station wagon.
Or an "I Brake for Hummels" sticker.
(By the way, some day I'm going to write about the history of bumper sticker catch phrases--the "I Brake for...," "...do it better," "Got...," and so on. The "Got..." construction is definitely approaching end-of-life.)
Yee-haw! The mailman brought me a care package from Amazon that included this delightful DVD.
Haven't been to a California, er, Anaheim, I mean Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim game in nearly twenty years. In fact, I remember it like it was yesterday. (You would to if it was against the Red Sox in the ALCS in 1986.)
After all these years, I finally made it back to see my childhood favorites, the California Angels.
It was just like I remember it. A sunny day. A good crowd.
And a 10-1 loss to the Detroit Tigers.
Just like old times.
Bastards.
About Last Night's Girl in Chicago has a chuckle over some typos. I mean, everyone knows it's Marvin. Duh.
Assemblyweenie Tom Umberg is a lightweight putz. Back when he ran for Attorney General, he was a lightweight putz. He still is.
During that campaign, he tried to make a name for himself by becoming the new "watchdog" over the California Department of Corrections (the prisons), but he was too much of an light-weight empty suited pu**y to pull it off. Hell, any half-wit politician can beat up on the California prison system. But not Airhead Dumberg.
His big issue now? The Anaheim Angels. Or the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Or whatever. Seeing as the good people of Anaheim elected this loser (and how far has Anaheim fallen? ), he feels duty bound the protect their interests.
How?
By proposing legislation in the California assembly (AB 1041) to require that the Angels to disclose on their game tickets that they really play in Anaheim.
Really? Ya think, Dumberg? Golly, all those fans buying tickets to go to Edison Field in Anaheim to see an Angels game are being fooled into thinking that they are actually in Los Angeles?
Of course, considering they may have voted for Dumberg, maybe I am being to harsh.
Putz.
Just so you know: You never need to remind your children's teacher (at any kind of school) that your money goes to pay his or her salary. You just don't.
And did you ever notice that in movies or tv shows, when they give that sort of line to a character, it's done to make the speaker look ridiculous?
/Louis-Black-rant
Please make a note of it. /telephone-recording-voice
Open letter to Pat Robertson:
Shut up!
Shut the F**k up!!!
Thank you.
UPDATE: I missed this, but apparently the band Cake (who?) said it better than I could, via Fraters Libertas.
Normally, Monkey Brad would be responsible for all Splenda-related Monkey Business. However, as Brad has taken up a Forrest Gump-esque quest on his bicycle, it is my duty to inform the blogosphere of a major event in the life of Splenda:
The Coca-Cola Company is currently testing a new Diet Coke sweetened with Splenda in the Phoenix market. A friend of mine tipped me off. Right now, you can get them in the small refrigerators next to the check out lines at Fry's grocery stores. I haven't checked any other grocers out. Also, the 20 oz. plastic bottles are only $0.50 with your Fry's card, so definitely bring that one along.
I'm drinking my first bottle right now. While it doesn't taste like I'm used to Diet Coke tasting, it does taste good. I'm guessing that people who are used to "regular" Coke will find the taste a bit more familiar.
If you see a bottle in your grocery or convenience store, add a comment reporting the location and any other relevant information. Also, please post your feedback on the taste.