4.22.2006

My problem is, I keep inadvertently stumbling across images of Dubya.

Gonzales calls for mandatory Web labeling law | CNET News.com: "A mandatory rating system will 'prevent people from inadvertently stumbling across pornographic images on the Internet,' Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said at an event in Alexandria, Va."

So how about a warning for that to, Alberto?

Uppity but not too uppity, you might say.

Guardian | Police in Tehran ordered to arrest women in 'un-Islamic' dress: "Young women shopping in north Tehran's fashionable Tajrish neighbourhood yesterday, however, were uncowed. Matin, 24, a nurse, was wearing a gaudily patterned light-blue head scarf pushed back to reveal sunglasses and bleached blond hair. Her tight, short black manteau with intricate gold patterns seemed designed to provoke the ire of the authorities. But she was unrepentant. 'I'm a married woman and it should be my husband who tells me what and what not to wear. He likes the way I dress,' she said."

How soon we forget.

The Virtues of a Second Screen - New York Times: "Recent Windows and Mac computers (and some Linux systems) can operate with multiple monitors; with my computer's Windows XP operating system, it took only a few keystrokes and mouse movements to set things up. Once I saw how it improved my productivity, I was an instant convert."

Actually, Dude (yeah I'm talking to you, Ivan Berger) Macs have been able to do that for as long as I can remember, which would be a dozen years or so. With a couple of clicks. Hooha.

And yeah, it is kinda nice - but if it's gonna be really nice you have to have two identical monitors, same size and same color characteristics. Like in the picture. Then it's nice. And why is it so nice? Because it's bigger. How's that for mind-boggling?

But thanks for mentioning, Dude.

Why am I getting tired of being told it's all my fault?

A Penny for Your Thoughts, and 1.4 Cents for the Penny - New York Times: "So retailers demand pennies from their banks, the banks demand them from the Federal Reserve, and the Fed orders them from the mint. Many of the people who get the pennies in change throw them into a jar, where they may sit for years, requiring the mint to make more and more of them."

If I get sick it's my own fault, if I get old it's my own fault - shoulda been jogging or some damn thing - and now the freakin pennies are my fault too.

Oh, and have you been having trouble getting online today? I think I broke the internet this morning. My fault.

"A nation of starfuckers"

Comment is free: The 'Hollywood' generals: "We are a nation of starfuckers, and ergo we produce an inordinate amount of schmucks who aspire to stardom. They clamour for their place to sing their way to fame and fortune on American Idol, race their way on The Amazing Race, scheme their way on Survivor, wrestle and scream their way on The Jerry Springer Show, weep their way on Dr Phil, reclaim their momentum on the myriad of reality shows for D-list celebs, and on and on and on. Andy Warhol was only slightly off in his 15 minute estimate; instead it's usually an hour - minus commercials."

4.20.2006

Sounds like a big boom to me.

Quake: Listening to Earthquakes: "When a loudspeaker produces sound it shakes. During an earthquake the ground shakes. To convert the earthquake shaking to sound we make the loudspeaker shake the same way the ground did. But, if we really did that the sound would be too low for people to hear. So, we speed things up so that the loudspeaker moves back and forth much faster than the ground did and then we can hear it."

Noted

Iran, You Ran, Let's Bomb Iran / When all else fails and you're becoming Nixon 2.0, why not just nuke someone, and smirk?: "His formerly enormous pile of betting capital is down to a tiny lump, nothing like back when he had the table rigged and all the pit bosses worked for him and the pile was as big as a roomful of Texas cow pies. But now, fortune is frowning. In fact, fortune is white-hot furious at being so viciously molested, spit upon, raped lo these many years. The truth is coming out: Bush has now lost far, far more bets than he ever won."

To arms! To arms!

In Lexington, Massachusetts, where once the embattled farmers stood (etc., etc.) a new crisis has arisen.
Parents rip school over gay storybook - The Boston Globe: "In 'King & King,' two princes kiss at the end of the book"
Eeeeeek!

You might be onto something here, Debra.

First Coast News - Florida State News - Woman Finds TSA Uniform In Her Luggage: "CLEARWATER, FL -- An airline passenger made a surprising discovery after flying from New Jersey to Florida -- When she opened her luggage, she found a uniform belonging to the Transportation Security Administration.

'I couldn't believe what was on there,' Debra Sanders said."


But dear! I have no idea where that came from. Why, it looks like Donald Rumsfeld's lipstick to me!

Yeah, that'll work.

4.19.2006

Well that's OK then.

70 people get stuck most of the night in cable cars dangling over the East River.

ABC News: 2 NYC Cable Cars With Dozens Get Stuck
"It didn't sound like anyone's being uncivil or anything," he said.

A swing on the porch.

And speaking political humor...

cbs5.com - Rove, McClellan Latest In White House Changes: "Rove is giving up oversight of policy development to focus more on politics with the approach of the fall midterm elections."

My bank gets robbed twice in less than a week.

recorder.com - Today's Headlines: "'I bet it was Max again,' said one young woman, who refused to be identified."

Max would also be the guy who, according to police, probably robbed another bank in the county between visits to my own. And there he was on this morning's front page (not the link above, which is to yesterday today but could be to today tomorrow, never can tell), Max, in not one but three handsome full-color photos from the bank's security cameras, looking sinister in a well-mannered way and making his most recent unauthorized withdrawal, whereupon he once again eluded police by, in the newspaper's description, slipping away in the downtown streets of which there are, is, one. Or two, if you turn the corner.

The town I went to college in, Northfield, Minnesota, was the locale for one of Jesse James' bank robberies, dramatically described in the 1972 movie, The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid and commemorated by a Jesse James Cafe, a Jesse James Barber Shop, and postcards sold at Tiny's Smoke Shop - things can get downright festive in a small town when the bank's been robbed - so I'm expecting a Max Fingernail Salon on Main Street any day now and maybe a big Max Days parade next year.

And if there's a movie maybe I can play myself as the intrepid blogger.

Wait! I thought we already had the first war!

kutv.com - Israel Warns Of New 'Axis Of Terror': "Ambassador Dan Gillerman cautioned that a new 'axis of terror' � Iran, Syria and the Hamas-run Palestinian government � was sowing the seeds of the first world war of the 21st century."

Or, well, you know, are having. If we're not careful we're gonna have a war over who had the first war.

Might be a few bugs in the plan.

Sprint has a new service that allows parents to track kids' cell phones. But the kids' phones beep when tracking occurs.
Watch Out, Kids: With GPS Phones, Big Mother Is Watching: "So at least the trackees can know exactly how they are being followed and can react accordingly -- say, by abandoning the phone on a church pew before running off to the mall."

Which doesn't exactly sound like...oh, wait...
(That it would also help Sprint get more cellphones into the age-12-and-under market is a handy side benefit for the company.)

Ah. I get it now.

4.18.2006

A sunny day.

San Francisco's "Earthquake Baby."

The youngest, Norma Norwood, said she was "conceived in the park,"
where her parents joined thousands left homeless by the quake. "My parents
snuggled to keep warm," Norwood said. "And when you snuggle, you have a
baby."

That's Norma. The Earthquake Baby. She's 99.

Heh

UNDERNEWS: MORE EVIDENCE OF PRINT MEDIA ENTROPY: "In fact, the title for best fashion criticism was retired years ago by Oscar Wilde who said, ' Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months' and by Stendahl how noted that 'only great minds can afford a simple style.'"

Mumps is not a character from Sesame Street.

But not too far from that if you happen to be a kid. (For adults things can get a little more serious and first-trimester pregnancies are at risk, which may make the whole thing illegal in South Dakota, I don't know.)

But if you're a kid mumps means you and any brothers or sisters you have get to stay home from school, you stay in bed and listen to the radio (it was a long time ago, when kids got mumps); the doctor comes to see you (see what I mean?) and tells your mom to give you lots of ginger ale and seven-up. Also your little sister tells you how funny you look (your cheeks swell up) until she gets it too.

When I got the mumps half a century ago somebody from the health department came and nailed a quarantine sign on the front door. Quarantines for childhood diseases were common although, it appears now, not terribly effective. And not strictly observed by neighborhood mothers who often brought their own children over to play with the lucky mumpee hoping that they, their own children, would catch it too, the common wisdom being (correctly) it was better to catch it young and get it over with. There was, as yet, no vaccine.

So not only did you get to stay in bed, listen to the radio, and drink ginger ale, you were also the most popular kid on the block for a day or two. All told, of the big three kids' common illnesses (mumps, measles, chicken pox) mumps was the best one to get.

Maybe it still is.

4.17.2006

Yikes!

Well too late now, I guess. Anyway, if the New York Times can redesign its web site I guess YAME can do it too. What the hell. Thing is, the Times gets to do it in but we're doing it right here where you can see. (Take that, Times.)

So this may be sort of a work in progress for a little while but when it's finished it'll be better than ever.

We believe in setting the bar low, we do.

Add a honk from here.

“Passing motorists often honk their horns and wave when they see Robin Sutton working in her yard,” says the Cincinnati Enquirer. Why's that, you ask? It's the display in Sutton's back yard.

The Enquirer - Zoning stink wears on:
To wit: 15 toilets sprouting with plastic flowers; dozens of purple, green, brown and white toilet brushes poking up from the lawn, and a host of multicolored pinwheels whirling in the breeze.
Sutton and her partner, Allen Lade, wanted to build a fence. But the township zoning board wouldn't allow it - too “visually imposing,” they said. Ah well.
Paul Drury, Anderson Township's assistant director of development services, said he gets occasional calls about the yard display.

“Most of them are inquiries about why they're allowed to do that,” he said. “We haven't found any zoning violations.”

4.16.2006

Do something special for the little lady - buy her a...

...dish towel? Can that be true? Whoa. I had no idea it was that easy. But - I'm not kidding here - I was at CVS today and there in the aisle of Easter stuff they're trying to get rid of before the end of the day was a rack of - yeah, I'm pretty sure I saw this - Easter dish towels. Who knew?

OK, I admit I'm in a state of semi-shock. Maybe it didn't happen. Maybe I just imagined it. But I know I didn't imagine the other thing. I have the evidence right here. I got the usual string of coupons with my receipt - CVS coupons are only one degree easier to understand than cell phone rate plans - there, I'm saying, at the end of the string was a flat-out, no-extra-strings, coupon good for one extra bucks!

Oh yes it does say that. One extra bucks. And maybe tomorrow they will mark down the Easter dish towels.

Spring creeps in.

File this under “That'll Be the Day.”

New York Leads Politeness Trend? Get Outta Here! - New York Times:
And throughout New York's history, its political leaders have sought to restore order to the chaotic streetscape and fine-tune urban life. Fiorello H. La Guardia once banned street performances involving monkeys. Decades later, Rudolph W. Giuliani's campaign against squeegee men came to embody his philosophy that fighting crime began with the smaller, quality-of-life offenses. But sometimes, the city's attempts to enforce the laws illuminated its hard-nosed nature:

Mayor Edward I. Koch's favorite parking sign warned motorists: “Don't Even THINK of Parking Here.”

Sold out.

Diamond-Studded Martini Runs a Cool $3,000:
Created for the Robb Report, the Robb cocktail cost $87,600 when it was offered in 2003 at the Rivoli Bar at The Ritz Hotel in London. Now unavailable, the cocktail was made with 22-carat gold leaf Eskalony vodka, Grand Marnier, peach liqueur and topped off with Ritz private label champagne. It came with a custom-made 13.66-carat yellow diamond swizzle stick that doubled as a bracelet.
But worry not. If you're in the mood for an expensive drink you can still drop $3,000 on a “Sapphire martini” at Connecticut's Foxwood casino, $10,000 for a diamond martini at Manhattan's Algonquin (I wonder what Dorothy Parker would have said about that), or $1,050 for a shot of Scotch at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.
“I think people are willing to spend more to have a premium experience so they're buying less but they're buying higher quality,” said Brett Anderson, senior vice president and editorial director for the Robb Report, the luxury lifestyle magazine.
Guess so.