Keeping Score

Ahhhhh

Finally, my run on bottled water can come to an end.

This weekend, with the help of one of the brothers-in-law (keeping the epic 6 hour battle from turning into one of sheer monumental proportions), I managed to install the new kitchen faucet, and more importantly, the line that now runs from under the kitchen sink through the basement and back up through the floor behind the refridgerator.

Yes, the fridge we bought back in August can now finally make ice, and through the use of a built-in filter, provide chilled filtered water through the door.

For the first time in seven years, I'll have fresh ice tomorrow in my glass. Because ice that sits in trays in the freezer? Ugh.

Who's on Stage?

So, I heard a rumor that CSI is going to try a third show, due to the rampant popularity of it. Maybe they're trying to trump Law and Order for the most shows on television or something. I don't know. All I know is I'm one of "those people" who loves every minute of both CSI's, so I'm sure I'll be watching the third as my speculation of the second and Caruso was cured with just one or two viewings.

However, a good question that's being debated is "Where?" the show is going to take place, as the original takes place in Vegas and the second one is obviously in Miami.

But I'm more interested in the "Who."

And I'm not talking about the actors.

I'm wondering which song they're going to use for the intro.

Fifteen Minutes and Counting

Well, it looks like I just might be on Mtv next week. They showed up here awhile back and taped an episode of Making the Game (I'm pretty sure I posted about this earlier, but I'm too lazy to pour through the archives).

The NBA Ballers ep will air on March 31st at 8pm (not sure if that's CST or EST or whatever, so check your local listings, etc.). Look for the guy you see in the upper-left hand corner up there nervously attempting to answer questions in long form.

Hey, I'm Back

But don't worry! I have nothing substantial to post! What with the baby-shower coming up, childbirth classes, the baby due-date getting closer and closer, "nesting" chores, etc., I've been quite the busy guy.

However!

I don't care what side of the raging political election debate you sit on, you have to agree that the old term "Jesus H. Christ!" needed a facelift, and the boys from MacHall.com supply the surgury:

"Jesus Herbert Walker Christ!"

The Smells of Spring

Spring is here! With all of the glorious things that come with it, such as flowers blooming, fresh air, and the constant whiff of second-hand smoke from people taking more smoke breaks outside my office door due to the warmer weather.

Ahhhhhh, the scent of cancer Spring. It makes my throat rough and sore just thinking about it!

Tinfoil Wallets

I was pointed to this article today, about a guy who microwaved a stack of fifty new twenty dollar bills, claiming that this wad of twenties ($1000 all told) set off a theft-detector in (of all places) a truckstop.

He claims that by microwaving the bills in a stack, it caused the "rfid" tags to explode. I'm not sure just what he's smoking, but there's a lot of problems with this story, besides the fact that the "rfid" tags are the security strip that runs the entire height of the bill down the left side. Please, read on.

A). He claims that there's a "uniform" burn mark eminating from the right eye of every single Andrew Jackson. Just looking at the photograph, anyone can tell that the burn marks aren't uniform. Some are small. Others are large. Others aren't even on Andrew Jackson's right eye. This is fairly telling. Just from my experience burning and blowing up tons of shit when I was a young boy, I can tell you that there was a singular device planted inside that stack of twenties which burned through them all when it exploded. A single explosive device would burn strongly in the center of the stack (the bills with the largest burn marks), and hardly at all towards the end of the stack (the smaller burn holes on the other bills). Even the way they're laid out on the table indicates that they were pulled right off the stack (small burn to large back to small again). I'm not even going to go into how there's other heat-induced burn marks further out from the original burn on some of the more nastily burnt bills, which would indicate that there was possibly a fuel source which was burning in close proximity to the burn mark (i.e. explosive device larger than the ink in the right eye of Andrew Jackson).

Now, if there were a similar device planted in exactly the same spot (the right eye) in every bill, then every bill would have roughly the same sized burn mark. Even the bills at the top would have a larger burn mark from burn-through from the bills on the bottom. I'm pretty sure there was an explosive device in those bills, but it wasn't any "rfid" tag. Furthermore, the burn marks would at least all be on the right eye, and not on the left eye as is evidenced by the top-left bill in the top photo.

B). If you're going to make a case for "uniform" burn marks through $1000 worth of twenty dollar bills, you could at least do the proper math when you publish your hoax, and you know, count to fifty. There's only thirty twenty dollar bills in the photograph. That comes to exactly $600.00 Where's the other twenty bills? What's the matter? Your planted explosive device not burn those well enough?

C). Your experiment should be repeatable. Seeing as you're talking about something as easy to get as a twenty dollar bill, and a microwave, I decided to try your little experiment at home. No, I didn't have a stack of fifty twenties (and neither did you, evidently), so I just put a new twenty and an older new twenty (what's that??? A control group?!?) on a plate in the microwave and let it run for three straight minutes.

You know what happened? Nothing. Nothing happened. There wasn't even so much as a spark. I've put metal in the microwave before, and let me tell you, you'll know when it's there. It blows sparks up to the roof of the microwave. There isn't any in the twenty. In fact, there's nothing in the twenty (new or old) that makes it heat up any more or less than any other part of the currency.

At first I thought maybe I was on to something, and needed to throw the bills in for even longer, because they came out extremely hot. But then I noticed that the glass plate (and the glass turntable the plate was sitting on) had become so hot that I could have cooked on them, thus the bills heated up due to conductive contact with the plate. I would love to even entertain the idea that maybe someone left a greasy stain on Andrew's right eye in the middle of the stack, but then everyone knows that microwaves heat things from the outside in, so even that wouldn't plausibly happen.

So, in short, you're full of it, but I suspect that your entire site is full of it, now that I've taken a short tour of the place. Keep your tin-foil hats on, and make sure you've got your wallets lined with lead, because you never know when someone's out to plant a lady-finger in your wallets guys.

I Approve This Message

I don't know if anyone else is seeing political ads like this, but everyone in Illinois is running ads that end with "I'm So-and-so, and I approve this message."

Were people confused last year at mud-slinging ads and thought that they were for the guy who was getting slinged? Are people really that stupid? Or do the politicians just think we're that stupid?

Hosed

Well, it appears that after doing this for not even two full years, I've max'ed out my storage space for this here blog. It took me all day to figure out why Blogger wasn't updating with the previous post, and so I finally decided to read the publishing error log, and saw that der wasn't any more room.

Whoops.

So all of 2002 (except for the 06-09-2002 page) had to be deleted. Well, I didn't need to get rid of all of 2002, but I figured if I was going to take out the trash, I might as well do it in bulk so I'm not stuck throwing out one page every time I want to upload another. I'm not that sad about it; this isn't meant for me to be some sort of online journal, but rather just some place where I can come and point out what's cool, or vent my spleen, or whatever. So who cares about what I wrote two years ago, anyway.

What this means, however, is that I need to get off my ass and finally finish the official new website (complete with its own URL and everything) which is to say start it, and then finish it, and then I'll have 50 times the storage capacity of this here little corner of the internet.

And I won't have to delete anything again.

We hope.

Selling It

I kept forgetting to blog this, but Tim* just reminded me with his most recent blog entry:

The new Quizno's Sandwich Ads.

What the fucking hell is up with those? Mutant Hampsters?!? With bad teeth? And horribly misaligned eyes? Singing off key? With capes on? At first, that poor falsetto immediately made me think fondly of Adult Swim, and the varied hilariousness which happens on shows like Spage Ghost and Sea Lab. But then I realized that a horribly ugly mutant hampster that sings off key is not what I want to think about when I'm hungry. And really, seeing that thing actually makes me lose my appetite.

Sure, I remember that it's Quizno's, but I also can remember that I haven't eaten there since those ads started running.

*This only further proves that Tim and I, although friends, seem to have almost nothing in common except for a love of MST3K and the idea that anyone should be free to marry whomever the hell they choose.

Remembering

I had no idea that the Academy honored Leni Reifenstahl in the "In Memorandum" piece. There's a huge discussion about it here, and while I read LGF daily, I wouldn't recommend checking it out. (For the uninitiated, Leni was Hitler's greatest propagandist, making, most notably, Triumph of the Will*). The comments are on fire in a desperate attempt to stamp out anyone saying that they can respect her work, but still hate the message.

While I'm just as disgusted about anyone when it comes to Nazism, what everyone who's not in the Film Industry doesn't understand is that Leni's work was groundbreaking when it came to directing and cinematography. I hate what Triumph stands for, but what a lot of people don't realize is that the infamous shot in Lion King of Rafiki holding Simba up in the air on top of Pride Rock is based entirely on Leni's work. The academy honored (and it hurts me to say that) her work because her techniques are used in films to this very day. It's honoring her work, not her politics, which is something that I think not only the Actors get wrong (See also: previous post), but evidently so do a lot of people watching the Oscars.

*Appropos of nothing, the banner ad at IMDB at the top of the page when I clicked on Triumph was for Shindler's List. I don't know if it's cosmic karmic coincidence, or if it's threaded marketing.

Oscar Notes

Cheers to Lord of the Rings getting 11 Oscars. It won every category it was nominated for, so while tying Ben Hur and Titanic, it set a record for winning everything it ran against.

Cheers to Sophia for getting the consolation prize for Best Screenplay. I thought she deserved one for Best Director or Best Picture, but when you're running against the LotR juggernaut in the Academy's "Holy Shit We'd Better Give This Epic Trilogy Some Awards" year, Best Screenplay is the best you can really hope for.

Jeers to the Academy for not giving it to Bill Murray. I don't care how great Sean Penn can "act." Anyone can get angry and emotional in front of a camera. I've seen lots of people "act" on Jerry Springer. I don't think anyone believes they deserve an award for their performances.

And to break from the whole mocumentary of People magazine, let me just throw out a hearty FUCK YOU to Sean Penn for his crack on the WMDs at the beginning of his acceptance speech. Sean, if I was in the audience, and had I known you were going to win, I would have brought fruit, and you would have been wearing it. I don't care what side of the political fence you sit on. You just won an award for being an actor, not for being a borderline mentally retarded political activist. The only person who gets a pass on the matter was the guy who won for Best Short Film Nobody's Actually Seen which was about Vietnam or some-such topic.