June 5th, 2004
Alzheimer's is something I would not wish on anyone. That someone who suffered from it so long no longer does is enough for me. These years we will see the 20th Century, long over, die before us.
Posted by fad at 4:23pm
June 4th, 2004
Posted by fad at 4:37pm
I think just about everyone of us with referrel logs knew this already.
Online porn sites get about three times more visits than the top Web search engines, including market leader Google Inc., a research firm said Thursday.Only 18.8%? You slackers! I can't do it all, you know. Though I'm damn well going to try.
Web sites categorized as "adult" accounted for about 18.8 percent of all Internet visits by U.S. users in the week ending May 29.
Posted by fad at 4:25pm
I removed a couple posts because they were too dull and boring to leave at the top on a Friday.
Posted by fad at 3:19pm
As if Denny's doesn't have reputation problems enough.
Police said that Anthony J. Lindhorst, 26, of Waterloo, deliberately contaminated food on at least two occasions by putting his semen into the honey-mustard dressing that the restaurant serves with its chicken strips, said Capt. Suzanne Sweet of the Waterloo police.Just about everyone I know who has spent significant time working in a kitchen rarely wants anything to do with the food that comes out of it.
Posted by fad at 12:27pm
A couple more quickies.
"Scientists try to inseminate rare bear"
Posted by fad at 12:24pm
Posted by fad at 10:03am
Some quicky randoms this morning.
Posted by fad at 7:14am
I think i've reached that point
Where giving up and going on
Are both the same dead end to me
Are both the same old song
I think i've reached that point
Where every wish has come true
And tired disguised oblivion
Is everything i do
Please stop loving me
PLease stop loving me
I am none of these things
I think i've reached that point
Where all the things you have to say
And hopes for something more from me
Are just games to pass the time away
Please stop loving me
Please stop loving me
I am none of these things
I think i've reached that point
Where every word that you write
Of every blood dark sea
And every soul black night
And every dream you dream me in
And every perfect free from sin
And burning eyes
And hearts on fire
Are just the same old song
Please stop loving me
Please stop loving me
I am none of these things
I am none of these things
I am none of these things
--The Cure "End"
Posted by fad at 12:01am
June 3rd, 2004
A set of four postage stamps and other mail products featuring Disney characters will be issued June 23.At least that's after I turn 30 so that I don't have to see the day before I was thirty.
Besides, don't you think these times call much more for Bugs Bunny?
Posted by fad at 6:08pm
Related to this post, I finally remembered to call to get the toilet fixed (it still worked fine, just ran constantly and siphoned away water pressure from everywhere else). I'm away from my apartment during their office hours and had just forgotten during the busy work days to call. Since killing two birds always satisfies my blood lust more, I tossed a stone at the leaky, bothersome water heater, too.
Short version: I gots no water now.
Posted by fad at 6:06pm
All my planning, all my years of searching the crevices of my soul to grout out the art within, all lost to me because someone else did it first.
Police said the man apparently broke a window in city hall with his belt buckle.It was going to be the greatest interactive public performance art piece of my career, but I foolishly decided to do it next week instead. Oh well. There's always "planB" (currently being workshopped on weekends). Society will have no choice but to awaken itself after that.
Authorities said suspect was found in a nearby apartment stairwell, naked, with a knife, and talking to himself.
Posted by fad at 5:08pm
I would like to stress, once again, how creepy the spelling bee is to me.
The National Spelling Bee took a scary turn Thursday when a 13-year-old Colorado boy appeared to faint and collapsed on stage, drawing gasps from an audience packed in for the finals. [The boy] gathered himself after a few seconds, stood up and, to the amazement of the judges, immediately started spelling his word: "alopecoid."They took him back stage and shot him full of cortisone. He should be ready for the second half.
Posted by fad at 1:49pm
Hmmm...maybe John Kerry is right that the Bush administration isn't working hard enough to keep us safe.
A meteor about the size of a computer monitor lit up the Northwest sky early Thursday morning, setting off sharp booms that stunned witnesses.Something seems awfully suspicious in this story. I bet it was a test run for the meteor planned for the Democratic convention.
Posted by fad at 1:41pm
As everyone knows, George Tenet resigned today. The timing is, shall we say, interesting. I have no conspiracy notions; this new tinfoil suppository has been working wonders the last few months, if a bit chafey. However, this should have happened a very long time ago, and doing it now just sets up the election season even worse than before.
I don't know if it's allowed, but I wouldn't bother nominating a permanent replacement until after the election. No one would be confirmed until long after then, anyway, and the Senate committee would just try to turn itself into another inquisition commission. Nothing is more useless than a senator except a senator with a chance to grandstand. Since too many senators are incapable of taking their task with the seriousness it deserves, hearings would just serve as another useless distraction during what will likely be a very, very busy rest of the year.
UPDATE: I just want to clarify that I am not saying we should dash off Constitutional requirements in the name of expediency. Of course a nomination and its process have to happen. What I am saying is that I believe that too many senators will dash off Constitutional requirements in the name of political and career expediency. This is why the timing is so bad. It's really too long a period for me to be comfortable with not nominating anyone, but it is still close enough that certain senators would have no problem dragging it out into uselessness as a leadership totally lacking in feck would stand just as uselessly by.
Posted by fad at 10:42am
This is a crisis I knew had to come
Destroying the balance I'd kept
Doubting, unsettling and turning around
Wondering what will come next
Is this the role that you wanted to live?
I was foolish to ask for so much
Without the protection and infancy's guard
It all falls apart at first touch
Watching the reel as it comes to a close
Brutally taking its time
People who change for no reason at all
It's happening all of the time
Can I go on with this train of events?
Disturbing and purging my mind
Back out of my duties, when all's said and done
I know that I'll lose every time
Moving along in our god-given ways
Safety is sat by the fire
Sanctuary from these feverish smiles
Left with a mark on the door
Is this the gift that I wanted to give?
Forgive and forget's what they teach
Or pass through the deserts and wastelands once more
And watch as they drop by the beach
This is a crisis I knew had to come
Destroying the balance I'd kept
Turning around to the next set of lives
Wondering what will come next
--Joy Division "Passover"
Posted by fad at 12:32am
June 2nd, 2004
shit accident stories
Posted by fad at 6:56pm
A celebration of equality in New Jersey.
The state's top civil rights official has ruled that taverns cannot offer discounts to women on "ladies nights," agreeing with a man who claimed such gender-based promotions discriminated against men.If this keeps up, women will be stuck having creepy guys like me buying their drinks for them.
Actually, I have only tried to buy some woman a drink a couple few times. Every time she wisely refused the drink. So don't worry, I'm not one of those who constantly bothers women at bars. I always assume -- quite rightly -- they would much rather I leave them alone.
Posted by fad at 6:46pm
With the world as crazy and confusing as it is today, it's nice to find a good ole comfort stereotype story.
The head of Broward County's most powerful government union was convicted Wednesday of pocketing payoffs from companies to keep them union-free and spending dues money on ritzy restaurant meals, junkets and cars.Ahhh...., union boss taking bribes. That's the stuff.
Posted by fad at 4:17pm
Ok, I have to say it. I find the national spelling bee to be incredibly creepy. I know they aren't all the spastic freaks that hit the highlights, but I do wonder what their playtime to drilltime ratio is. It seems a foolish amount of pressure. I get the exact same vibe from these things that I do from child beauty pageants.
Then that just may be an extension of my youthful hatred of my schools requiring us to try to compete in these things. "Spell 'cat'." "K-A-T. Can I go play now?" Another good one was to turn in math meet stuff with every answer -1. My all time favorite was some stupid math test that you had to get all but 4 or so correct to move on to the next round. I flipped through the problems, and as soon as I found a 5th I knew I couldn't do, I put my head down and napped the rest of the session.
Posted by fad at 2:28pm
Nelson Mandela is stepping away and slowing down, but not going completely. The BBC asks who will the world turn to now? They suggest Bill Clinton to be the great moral sage of our times. Those commenting agree, though one says Kofi Annan would be spanky. Personally I think Kofi is still a bit busy trying to hide all the money. If not that, it's hell spending all that time to cover up sexual abuse, to the point of near slavery, by peace keepers or the possible use of ambulances by terrorists (This last comes from Michelle Malkin, not someone I consider a sober voice of reasoned information and analysis. Take that and the story as you will.) Lucky for him, our objective, truth seeking media is putting about as much effort into those stories as I do in my personal appearance. Since you can't pretty up a shit pie, why bother?
But the funny thing is, as of this typing (not writing because I'm not a writer, just a typer) no one has mentioned Jimmy Carter. He's gotta be pissed.
Posted by fad at 2:02pm
Government bureaucracy changes reality once again.
Wine is to be reclassified as a natural food rather than an alcoholic drink under French law,Be it declaring ketchup a vegetable or this, I'm always taken aback how much bureaucratic control requires all these subtle and not-so-subtle reclassifications. The absurdity of the bureaucratic state would be funnier if it didn't have so much power.
Posted by fad at 1:19pm
Somebody else watched Strange Brew recently.
A woman who claimed she found a mouse in her soup while celebrating Mother's Day at a Cracker Barrel restaurant was accused with her son of planting the rodent and attempting to extort money from the company.Going after Cracker Barrel. How low can you get.
"We learned that the mouse died from a fractured skull before it entered the soup," Cracker Barrel spokeswoman Julie Davis said. In addition, the animal had no soup in its lungs, nor had it been cooked -- signs it had been dropped in the soup after its death, she said.They're a regular CSI: Cracker Barrel over there.
Posted by fad at 9:46am
This Monday will mark three years of living in St. Louis, and that is really, really depressing. In all that time, one thing I cannot get used to is the idiotic way people merge or change lanes around here. Maybe it's just a western St. Louis county thing, but drivers will take up to a full mile to complete a lane change. I am not exaggerating. It's a sloooooowwwwww process that has that added bonus of blocking up two lanes at once so you can feel extra importance at being the brick of cheese which constipates the whole highway.
Where the hell are my flying cars?
Posted by fad at 8:15am
All going well -- such as all calculations being done using the same system -- it'll be a summer of purty pikturs.
The Cassini space craft has performed what may be its final course correction before entering orbit around the ringed planet Saturn on 1 July.Sweet. When I was 10, my parents got me a cheap little Jason telescope (best we could afford). I spent nearly every night for weeks out in the driveway trying to look at Saturn through it.
Cassini will release its piggybacked Huygens probe in January next year. Huygens will attempt to land on the oily seas of Saturn's major moon, Titan.That's the part that really has me fascinated.
Meanwhile, Nasa has released stunning images of Saturn as the probe approaches.Do they also spin right round like a record, baby?
The photos show the gas giant and its rings in exceptional detail, including giant storms in the planet's atmosphere and Saturn's rings arranged in fine concentric grooves like a vinyl record.
Posted by fad at 6:52am
standing in the dark outside the house
breathing in the cold and sterile air
well i was thinking how it must feel
to see that little light
and watch it as it disappears
and fades into
and fades into the night
so i know you're going pretty soon
radiation sore throat got your tongue
magic markers tattoo you
and show it where to aim
and strangers break their promises
you won't feel any
you won't feel any pain
and the streets are jammed with cars
rockin' their horns
to race to the wire
of the unfinished line
thought that i'd forget all about the past
but it doesn't let me run too fast
and i just wanna stand outside
and know that this is right
and this is true
and i will not
fade into
fade into the night
standing here in the dark
-- Eels "Dead of Winter"
Posted by fad at 12:53am
June 1st, 2004
A boat party in an exclusive area of Long Island Sunday night was interrupted -- when a severed human hand mysteriously dropped out of the sky onto the deck of a boat, police said yesterday.The rich really are a different breed. Sudden severed hands at parties. I fear where they will go next.
Posted by fad at 6:50pm
Now I have been drunk before. I have done strange and stupid things whilst drunk (but no salacious stuff, only because there hasn't been enough alcohol in the world to this point for some woman to beer goggle me. I've been all for it. Mine have only involved singing or "Hey, I've that much to drink and I don't feel all that drunk. I think I'll call her and tell her how drunk I don't feel."). But I've never considered something like this.
"The students had made a kind of floating island and ventured out to sea under the influence of alcohol. They were carried into the open sea by the current and had to be rescued," a police statement said.That's also more productive than I've ever seen drunks. I've seen drunks tear down plenty of things, but never build (outside stacks of glasses or fries).
The group of 15 to 20 students was let off with little more than a stern warning from police who accused them of "irresponsible behavior."Should have made the fuckers pay for the police and rescue effort, too.
Posted by fad at 3:27pm
Except for the fact that it costs money to file a suit, I would think this is a joke.
[A] 21-year-old English student at Kent University in Britain who admits plagiarizing material from the Web, said the school should have warned him that using already published text was against the rules, according to the BBC.Of course since he lifted his essays, no one can say for sure that he got his education. Sounds like he subscribes to my theory that you don't earn a degree; you merely buy it.
[...]
[The student], who was told on the eve of his final exams that he wouldn’t get any grades for his course work, is angry that his education — and the money he paid for it — is going to waste.
Quotes edited to remove the name of the student to reduce stupid search hits. Speaking of search hits, this morning popped in one of the all time greats: what city is we built this city on rock and roll based on?
Posted by fad at 2:46pm
Hot fucking hallelujah! The Trashcan Sinatras finally got a distribution deal in the States. The album is out August 31st with small tour to follow. On that day it shall be mine. Oh yes, it shall be mine.
Posted by fad at 1:32pm
Ok, forget the shack in Montana. This is where I'm going to spend my drunken retirement.
The retreat, funded by government, offers seating for old and young drunks and cushioned floors so they do not hurt themselves when they fall over or pass out.Cushioned floors. Bless them.
Posted by fad at 1:30pm
Now this is very interesting.
Egyptian Intelligence Chief Omar Suleiman has reportedly warned Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat to relax his grip on the reins of Palestinian power or face the possibility that Egypt and the United States will cease to block Prime Minister Ariel Sharon from carrying out his threat to ''remove'' the chairman.The demands are basically for him to completely remove himself from power. They give him until June 15th to make up his mind or "his future will be 'left in the hands of Ariel Sharon.'"
Posted by fad at 1:28pm
Dammit. Now I have to depend on the Pistons or the Pacers to beat the goddamn, shitfoam Lakers? I haven't really followed the NBA for years, but some hatreds are too deep to ever let go.
Posted by fad at 8:06am
Argggghhh, matey, they be tryin' to stop our piracy.
Ushers at British cinemas showing the new Harry Potter (search) film have been issued military-style night vision goggles to thwart cinema pirates.Eventually they will put snipers in the theaters. Nothing will stop your urge to record like your neighbor's head exploding. Oh wait. This is Britain. No snipers. They'll give the ushers big foam bats to bop offenders on the head whilst saying, "You been served!" The humiliation or threat of humiliation will prevent piracy and cause everyone to hug.
Posted by fad at 7:54am
We've heard this before.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says he will accept a recall referendum on his term in office.Uh huh. Later on it is, as always in news articles, less definite than that. He says he will accept it if all the conditions which, for some reason, never seem to be met are met. But what caused this burst of apparent cooperation?
For a president living under the cloud of a possible recall vote, Mr Chavez was in confident mood as he announced his decision after a meeting with international observers, including the former US president Jimmy Carter.Isn't it amazing how dictators and wannabe tyrants the world over always feel better and more confident after a nice chat with Jimmy Carter?
Posted by fad at 7:11am
The women of the Illinois legislature have carefully considered the problem and determined that it is men.
"Men are not capable of crafting budgets!" state Rep. Julie Hamos, D-Evanston, angrily told her colleagues on the House floor as the deadline ticked away with no progress and no explanation.What the hell is she doing out of a kitchen?!?
Women do cooperate better," said Linda Gannon, a professor of psychology at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. "When they form a group to get things done, it has less of a hierarchy, it's more egalitarian. But the question is, 'Why?'That's it. For the good of society, I'm going to kill myself. One less man around ought to fix things.
"Some people believe it's . . . biology," she said. Others, she said, subscribe to the theory that it's not being female that makes women more cooperative but being "powerless" in society. Under that theory, Gannon said, "If women had all the power (in the Legislature), then the men would be cooperative."
Posted by fad at 6:56am
For no reason other than I want to, I will start each of the last four work days this week by posting the lyrics, pretty much without comment, to a song which is either stuck in my head or a favorite. So here's the first one.
the hardest thing of all is to belong.
the oddest thing of all, this time,
is i'm not sad at all. i can see beyond,
the hardest thing of all - goodbye
leave me alone - you're all i wanted.
don't haunt me now; don't want you now.
leave me alone. i've found what i'm made of.
don't want you back. don't need you back.
got no place to go, feeling's going slow,
the lowest of the low tonight.
well how am i supposed to know?
if you won't talk to me;
don't talk to me.
just leave me alone - you're all i wanted.
don't haunt me now; don't want to know
just leave me alone. i've found what i'm made of
don't want you back. don't need you back
yeah, the hardest thing of all,
the oddest thing of all,
is i'm not sad alone -
goodbye
leave me alone - you're all i wanted.
don't haunt me now; don't taunt me now
leave me alone. i've found what i'm made of.
don't want you back. don't need you back.
-- Trashcan Sinatras "Leave Me Alone"
Only one note: I got to hear this live, and my knees buckled when the first note sounded.
Posted by fad at 12:06am
May 31st, 2004
Today is our national "funeral". For some it is direct and so dearly immediate. We celebrate those who died for the specific purpose that we may continue to live as we would. They died so that we can continue to argue. They died so that we can continue to try to perfect this nation and ourselves. They died so that there can be life and life well lived.
In celebration of their sacrifice, I will continue to live my life in defiance. I will live in defiance of anyone who thinks they can tell me how to live. I will live in defiance of anyone who wants to kill me because I refuse to bow to their demands when all I want to do is be left and leave alone. I will live in defiance of all who hate people who live and act in their random freedom. I will live in defiance with all thanks to them who gave their ultimate for their nation.
Posted by fad at 11:16am
May 30th, 2004
Just proves I'm not meant to win.
Posted by fad at 11:01pm