News Archive - August 2006
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8-30-2006
Okay, this is the last time I'm pimping out "Veronica Mars" till I finish the season 2 DVD set. But, if you're thinking about snagging season 1 on DVD now is the perfect time. Target is selling the set for $18.99. RUN, don't walk, to your nearest store and buy it.
8-29-2006
Okay, it's time to do a little catching up. Fact is, for the last few days I've been glued to my DVD player. It's been non-stop "Veronica Mars." I'm 20 hours into the first season (second viewing) and I have the second season opened and ready to go. Anyway, let's run down the current events:
John Mark Karr - Please, did anyone think it would be this easy? Although the guy looks like a recent Chris Hansen interviewee did anyone really expect this guy to be the one? Better yet, is a 10 year old murder of a white girl still headline material? Aren't we in a war? You know, something important like American service men and women dying on a daily basis? Fuck JonBenet Ramsey!
Tom Cruise - I DID lose all respect for you when you leapt over Oprah's couch. I went and saw War of the Worlds despite my waning interest in your career. Your recent boot-to-the-ass by Paramount just confirms that you're an overpaid schmuck. You ruined Katie Holmes and I hope your career ends up in a South Park closet.
Ray Nagin - Blow me. To quote Fark: die in a fire. Your inept leadership of New Orleans and it's rebuilding is, in no way, comparable to 9/11.
Little League - Proving that the US can still play ball, the Columbus, GA little league team beat Kawaguchi City, Japan for the world little league championship. Suck it, Cuba.
Prison Break - Are you watching the new season of "Prison Break?" No? Doom on you. This is some of the best TV in a long time. Run out and get season 1 on DVD, watch it, and then catch up on the new season now!
8-22-2006
Good day in TV
Today is a good day in TV. Last night was the season premiere of "Prison Break" and I'm happy to say that they didn't skip a beat from last season. The show still has the fast pace, plot twists and excitement even though our heroes are over the wall. I can not wait to see what happens this season.
The other great news is that today season 2 of "Veronica Mars" comes out on DVD. I'm prepared to hole up in my apartment for 40 hours to re-watch season 1 and then dive into the new set for more Kristen Bell goodness!
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8-20-2006
Dear Verizon,
Suck my balls, you thieving bastards.
Sincerely,
NetEnigma.com
So about a week ago the government did away with the 3% tax they'd been collecting since the Spanish-American war. In that article Verizon claims to have been lobbying for its customers to get it repealed for help in "alleviating consumers' telephone tax burden."
Today I get an email from Verizon telling me that the absence of this tax will save me about $1.25 per month on my DSL collection. Great, right?
That is until you read down further in the email and find that because they are no longer collecting this tax they'll now be collecting a $1.20 surcharge to "help offset costs we incur from our network supplier in providing Verizon Online DSL service."
So, instead of sending that $1.25 to the Fed now they'll be lining their own pockets with an additional Buck-twenty of my fuckin' money!
Read the full email here: Verizon Anal Rapes Their Customers - Again.
Bastards sucked me in for $15 a month for DSL because I refused to pay blood money to Time Warner for their cable service. Now, just when I thought Verizon might do the right thing, they decide to continue on being the spawn of Satan.
8-14-2006
Flippin Sweet
Some of the best model makers and most creative people I've met or read about are in the model railroad and 1:6 collecting hobbies. Well, I think I've now seen the ultimate 1:6 diorama that combines both worlds with an incredible outcome.
A UK WWII buff and 1:6th military modeler has created an incredible German train depot diorama and photos are now online. The link goes to a forum and there are a lot of large pictures so keep that in mind if you have a slow Internet connection.
Peter Shaw's Class "52 Locomotive
8-13-2006
Insult to Injury
What kinds of things do you NEVER put through in your checked luggage? Cameras, computers, MP3 players...basically anything of value. You also should always carry an extra pair of underwear in your carryon luggage in case yours gets lost.
Good tips, right? Not after last week's terrorist arrests. Not only can you no longer carry on liquids but your electronics are out as well. Making it worse, at least in Britain, if you check your electronics through and they're lost or damaged, tough fucking luck.
In other news, airport baggage screening areas are the new hot shopping spot for Christmas this year. Prices are affordable!
Call the Mythbusters
It's not every day that you find water spurting from a tree in your front yard. Did God send this to you as a sign? Did a water main break? Maybe it's something otherworldly but I'm thinking this can be explained with a few graphics.
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Back a hundred years ago some farmer, rancher or regular homesteader sunk a pipe in the ground to get water for his herd or family. Eventually, since there was water there, grass and maybe even a tree started to grow.
Eventually the area was abandoned and the tree grew up around the well head. The pipe eventually rotted off inside the tree allowing water to seep up through, maybe because the well below was full, the ground shifted due to construction or whatever.
This water eventually worked it's way out through the tree and now it's running out on the ground. I say, x-ray or put a metal detector on that tree and see if you don't find some sort of pipe in it.
8-12-2006
Holy Shit
Hey, Todd, our town's famous! It made the Press & Sun-Bulletin also and it was on Countdown with Keith Olberman Friday night.
Ironically, if the Lumberjack Festival hadn't been cancelled this year, that same tomahawk probably would have been in use two weeks ago in a competition! Apparently 1880's technology is no match for today's Tasering.
Happy Birthday
If you're reading this on a personal computer then celebrate, the PC is 25 years old today. Way back in in 1981 IBM debuted the 5150. It had such a small amount of memory in it that today your watch is smarter.
I disagree with that article on one point; the end of the PC era. I remember when we had the end of the "server" era a couple years ago. Granted, servers got immensely smaller, but we still have them. They're running the Internets you're reading this on.
Doctored
So this guy, Adnan Hajj, is in deep shit over some doctored photos that he took in Beirut. Reuters pulled all his photos from their web site and distanced themselves from him, I guess in the name of integrity of their photo database.
Honestly, I have no idea what a doctored photo might look like. I figure if it's on the web it must be real. I mean, check out this shot, it's obvious why Beirut is burning down so why would you have to edit your photos to make it worse?
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Socializing
Meeting new people on-line and trying to have sex with them just got a little easier. If you're sick and tired of trolling MySpace.com hoping against hope that the hottie you're chatting with isn't really Chris Hanson, check out Utherverse.com.
Read My Lips
No old taxes! Remember that telecom tax that was imposed in 1898 to raise money for the Spanish-American War? Well, we don't have to pay it any more.
Ironically, the tax is now going away while were in the middle of an immigration war with Mexicans.
America's Pastime
Have you heard about Romney Oaks, the 9-year-old Utah survivor cancer who got struck out in his Little League game, costing his team the championship? Apparently, striking out a cancer survivor is a huge national crisis.
It's your standard fantasy situation; bottom of the 9th (or whatever inning you play to in this league), two outs, one run on, you're down by a run. You come to the plate and you...
Strike out.
Sometimes you knock the game-winning dinger and go home the hero, sometimes you whiff and cry yourself to sleep. This time, Romney whiffed. It happens to the best players, but to make this a national conspiracy theory is screwed up.
Here's the thing; walking a strong hitter to get to a weaker hitter is a legitimate strategy in Baseball. Keith Olberman (It's the number 1 story, read to the bottom) makes the point that, strategically, if you walk the strong hitter you also walk the next batter to load the bases. That makes it a force out on any base and increases your chances, on an infield grounder, of making the out before the run scores. But there are all sorts of strategies in baseball, like walking a strong batter to get to the guy that's batting .057 in the 9th inning of championship games held on a Tuesday in August west of the Mississippi against pitchers that have an E or J as their first initial.
Hell, in the bigs they'll walk a right handed batter to get to a lefty because the pitcher has some fancy cutter or screwball that'll handcuff said lefty.
Seriously, we all know why this is a news story; cancer. The kid is a cancer survivor, period. If he'd hit the game winning homer it wouldn't have been news, if he was healthy and strong it wouldn't have been news either. But, instead, the coverage on this is doing nothing but slandering the opposing coach and, if they watch the coverage, making the winning team's players feel like shit for picking on the sick kid.
I'm sorry but that's the game. The father, Marlo Oaks, argued that an intentional walk had never been used in that league and that, at that level, they shouldn't be doing everything to win but to teach about the game and sportsmanship. Blah, blah, blah. Just be happy your kids aren't dodging bombs on their way to school every morning (that is if the school hasn't already been burned to the ground). For good or bad this is a competitive society.
We compete against each other in sports, the job market, for grades, for housing and nicer cars. But competing fairly shouldn't be looked down upon because one of the parties involved is sick. He's playing the game, he knows the rules and the strategies (or he's learning them) and he should know that each team is trying to win. It's good, clean, sound baseball. There are no steroids in little league, 9-year-olds aren't blood doping and nobody even knows what a corked bat is yet. The pitchers aren't snorting coke off a hookers ass and the coach isn't getting $300 million a season to score that new Golden Glove third baseman.
The coach of the Yankees played a good game. He used a sound strategy to win his team the championship. Would it have been fun for his team to lose because he let the other teams best hitter slug away when he didn't have to? Would the kids have learned some life lesson by cutting the sick kid some slack or was it better to treat him like any ordinary 9-year-old and show him the respect they showed everyone else?
It may sound harsh but, IMO, they treated this kid like any other. He wasn't as good of a hitter so they walked the slugger to get to him. He still had the opportunity to play, to be put in the position of winning the game and he missed. Anyone that's ever played a sport has been in that situation, sometimes you're the hero, sometimes the goat. But nobody made it a national news story when you were the goat.
If this is an "everyone hits" league then I'm more pissed that Jordan, the slugger, got walked. At least Romney got to bat in the final inning of the game, Jordan wasn't afforded that same honor. Where's the outrage over that? One last point, Rick Reilly claims that "what the Yankees' coaches did was make it about them, not the kids." Well, I might say the same about the news agencies covering this. They made it about them and their outrage over, in their opinion, this kid getting picked on.
Ironically, for all the outrage, even Reilly finishes his article with a quote from Romney that sums this all up; "I'm going to work on my batting," he told his dad. "Then maybe someday I'll be the one they walk."
Romney, apparently, is the only one that learned a lesson in all of this. Everyone else is just pissing in the wind looking for some press.
8-11-2006
Liquids on a Plane
This sequel to Snakes on a Plane will star Ben Affleck and Rachel McAdams...wait, you mean it's not a joke that terrorists tried to sneak liquid bombs onto planes in Britain?
Oh. Well, shit.
Back to School
Yes, it's that time of year again; kids are preparing to head back to school over the next couple of weeks. In preparation for the yearly migration to colleges across the country I present you with this guide to college:
Big-E's College Survival Guide for Freshmen
Inspiration
If you've ever needed inspiration to fight a war, a hot broad is pretty good motivation. When the hot broads are badass, gun carrying members of your military it's even better.
Is this the US military? Nope. These hot broads would be members of the Israeli Defense Force. Feast your eyes on the Girls of the IDF.
8-8-2006
Stop me if you've heard this one before
So the Veteran Affairs Department lost a computer with 38,000 names and Social Security numbers on it putting them all at risk of identity theft.
Your tax dollars at work.
Speaking of money
Kiss another bunch of it goodbye. Apparently $10 billion in profits wasn't enough for BP to do annual maintenance on their Alaskan pipeline. The result? Gas is already up about $0.10 since Sunday.
Bastards.
8-2-2006
Fuck it's hot.
It's been so hot the last couple of weeks, and especially the last 2 days, that I made a chart to point out the various stages of hotness and where we are in NY right now.
Drunken Bastard
You know, this whole Mel Gibson thing is out of hand. He gets drunk, gets arrested and in the middle of that he talks some shit. So what?
Everyone I know who's ever been drunk has talked shit at some point. Just because he talked shit on the Jews is that worse than if he was yelling about blacks, Asians, Arabs, Russians or rednecks? No.
So why does everyone treat it that way? Why do the Jews get to have some worse reaction to all this than if he'd been insulting, say, fat people? Give it a rest.
And for all the talk about this ruining his Hollywood career? Please, if fucking Paris Hilton can have a "career" in Hollywood how can one drunken outburst chase a multiple Oscar winner out of town? Jesus Christ, R. Kelly pissed on a broad and still got to release a fuckin' album!
Mel, go get your head straight, make the apologies that Hollywood is going to force you to make and then make some new movies. I, for one, will not be boycotting your movies.