12/10

The government claims to have found a video tape that proves bin Laden was behind the 9/11 attacks: "The 40-minute tape was found in a private home in the eastern Afghanistan city of Jalalabad and featured language indicating bin Laden was familiar with the planning of the attacks, the Post said, citing senior U.S. officials.
"`It's further confirmation, and hopefully maybe we'll stop hearing any more of these insane conspiracy theories that somehow the U.S. has made this up or somebody else did it.'''
Oh, but they're not going to SHOW anybody the tape, supposedly because "We have not been eager to give the guy any extra television time than he could obtain for himself," & it could compromise the "`sources and methods' used to obtain the video," this video that they found in someone's house, a house owned by bunch of guys now hiding in the mountains.
So...they have the proof, but they refuse to show it. THAT should kill any conspiracy theories. "We also have a written confession from Lee Harvey Oswald that he was the only gunman, but, you know, you'll have to trust us on this too."
Way to kill off those conspiracy theories, guys!! It sure worked when Project Blue Book ended all those UFO theories 30 years ago!
And then the Deputy Secretary of Defense adds, ``And I suppose it is at least theoretically possible that he could take plastic surgery, disguise himself as a woman, and hide somewhere in the mountains of Chechnya, and it might be a long time before we find him.'' So--if we DO find him, it might be SOMEONE ELSE that had plastic surgery to make himself LOOK like Osama!
Way to kill off any future conspiracy theories, guys!!
Maybe he'll go so far as to get a sex change, then live as a homeless person on the streets of America, plotting EVIL. He'd be Osama bag Lady!

I watched TV last night. NO, REALLY, I DID! It was a 3 hour long show on the Discovery Channel called "Walking with Prehistoric Beasts." No, it was not about being in the Mall before the stores open. It was about big weird old mammals, & the sequel to "Walking with Dinosaurs." Fascinating, if you're interested in the subject matter. They use CGI & puppetry to recreate the critters, then do it all as an actual "nature documentary." After a while, you simply forget that it's fake. The little dog-sized horses moved just like horses would, if dog-sized; the saber-toothed kittens romped past Daddy just like KK galloping after a toy mouse.
"This is fossil dung, or 'coprolites,' as we paleontologists call them." said a ZZTop-bearded scientist. "We can tell a lot about the creatures that left these coprolites, or 'turds' as we call them..." Ha ha! Funny paleontologist! This was followed by a scene of a hyenadont, a big-assed predator, taking down some living lunch, only to be interrupted by the meanest predators then alive: Giant Killer Pigs. (Where's Super Green Beret's Uncle Roger when you need him?) The hyenadont tried to drive away the Super Pig Berets by taking a nice big steamin' dump on his food. And all I could imagine was the guy in the CGI unit whose job was animating a giant dog taking a shit. Imagine the research. Prly followed Great Danes around with a videocam for days.

That 3 inches of snow we got yesterday is now dribbling noises from the raingutters. It's still there on most of the grass, but not for long. It was 48 degrees today, according to bank time & temperature sign. That seems a bit high, especially since that same sign claimed that it was -8 Celsius, which would be about -15F. Why did the Metric system make only 2 inroads into America? Liquid measures would be one, like 2-liter soda bottles or 750ml "fifth" bottles of liquor. And yet milk or gas is still only sold in Imperial measures. The other is Celsius, but only on bank time & temp signs. Why there? Are there Frenchmen wandering America, wanting nothing but to know the temperature, the time, & where they can open a money-management account? Zut alors!
I used to drive by a bank sign that had problems every time the temps dropped below 20 degrees. It would simply make up a temp, usually something like 192 degrees below zero. Or sometimes, 250 degrees above. The bank tried to fix it, but after that when it got really cold, it just said that it was "y0" degrees out. Word to yo weathermama!

In the sunshine & general dripping, I went SalvArmying. This time I had an offering to Salva, Goddess of Thrift Stores, a Mickey Mouse plush. I got him for free & also $125 at Toys Rn't Cheap when shopping for the swarm of neices&nephews. I could've given him to 1 of them, but then I'd have to get a 2nd something for all 8 of the rest, which would lead to an infinite cycle of more buying & more Mickeys. Orrrr....I could donate Walt's bastard son & get $30 off of my taxes! Umm, and some lucky child could get this from their budget-strapped parents. Yeah, Joe Benevolence, that's me.
Mickey was Evil. He had baggy cargo pants in an "I ate too many peas & drank too much tequila" vomit color, designer-like sneakers, & a shirt that said "MICKEY" in an AberZombie & Crutch logowear font. So Mickey himself was an enticement to buy more crap that's just crap you don't need. Good riddance & thanks for $30 deduction, human-sized rat.
There's only 14 more shopping days till Xmas, remember! Except for me! I finished 30 days ago! AHHH-HAHAHAHA!!!! Hey, glad to offer some salt for your wounds!

Then I went to BIG!Lots. I passed Pratt & Whitney, a company that's prly made the engines on every jet you've ever flown on, & most of the ones dropping Daisy Cutters on Tora Bora.
Infinite Typing Monkey: "'Dropping Daisy Cutters on Tora Bora'?! That's so RANDOM!" (rips sheet from typewriter, throws it away)
ANYway, there's a strike going on--The company offered a very generous financial package, when all the union wanted was a promise that they wouldn't move any more jobs away from CT. Yeah, it's easy to offer big money to people you're planning on firing anyway.
I had to sit at the light for a while before it changed. Made me proud to be an American, where at least some protest is still tolerated. Not that it was that much of a "protest." The strikers walked across the entrance, next to the mandatory wintertime Strikers' Barrels with Fire in Them. If a car went into the place, a guy blew a whistle & pointed at the car. Didn't throw a rock; the company didn't respond with rocket-firing helicopters. When a car went to leave, the strikers moved out of the way. The car didn't try to run them over, or explode. Jets didn't kill any policemen, while complaining that the police weren't arresting enough people. Paying attention here, Ariel Sharon? Of course you ain't. Eye for an eye, that always brings peace! I mean, both sides have been doing that to each other for 4,000 years, it's BOUND to work any day now!

Made it to BIG!Lots. I passed on the "Douche & Enema Syringe," as I could only use half of it.
I also passed on a kitty toy, a battery-powered ball that scoots along the floor. I was semi-interested until I read that the box recommended "tying fishline to a helium balloon" as something your cat could chase. Yeah, chase, pop, eat, choke, die. Maybe I'll just force a nickel down her throat. Hey, Mr Toy Designer! I got your children some toys! Plastic bags with Harry Potter faces painted on them! Tie 'em good & tight, kids!!
I dropped the whole $30 I saved by donating Mickey at B!L, mainly on food. Mistakes: Big box of 24 packages of the day-glo orange kind of cheese&peanut butter crackers--They turned out to be "cheese" & "cheese" crackers, with a "cheese" filling that's some kind of barely-edible food-product-like-flavored tub grout; & a compact flourescent bulb. "Lasts up to 5 years, based on an average use of 3-4 hours a day!" The only socket it would fit in was in the bathroom, & so it's more likely to last more than 5 years. Like until the sun becomes a bloated giant in the sky & swallows the Earth.
I also bought a model of a Lockheed P-38J Lightning, the most kick-assiest fighter plane of WWII. "The Fork-Tailed Devil" the Nazis called it, because of its twin-boom tail & the fact that its nose held 4 50-cal. machine guns & a 20mm cannon, all focused on one point. Find your Messerschmidt or Zero at that point, and, well, goodbye Mr Fascist guy. It took down more planes than any other US fighter back then, & was the plane flown by our greatest fighter ace of WWII. His name?
Richard Bong.
DUDE!! Like that is so awesome! Hey, like don't bogart that fighter ace!
I didn't realize that if you put it on its display stand, there's a little ripcord that makes the propellors spin! I tried playing "King Kong" with Kill Kill using it, but she just sniffed at it. Sniffed at the P-38 Lightning!
Cats have no sense of history.

I haven't had a lot of serious links here lately, as the purpose of this page is not all that serious. But here's a long, somber look at the personal stories of those who lost family at the WTC.
"There were isolated moments when September 11 no longer clung to him. He found a rhythm in answering alarms again. But each time they rode back to the firehouse, they were met by hundreds of cards and letters taped to the walls. The locker next to Senn's was still empty; its occupant dead. Inside his own locker, he had rearranged his photographs of Christine, their dog Bentley and his dream motorcycle, replacing that tableau with 15 carefully taped memorial cards from funerals he had attended. This was his problem: He wanted to forget yet he kept forcing himself to remember."
It's almost entirely about these people, but it also includes some things you didn't hear on the news, such as Guiliani possibly rushing the recovery effort to ensure his place in history, or the quarter-billion dollars in gold that was recovered just before Rudy decided to slow down the recovery effort (leading to that famous cops-vs-firemen tussle), or the fact that the debris is being tossed into dump trucks & processed--human body parts & all--at a garbage dump with the unpleasant name of Fresh Kills.

I was driving in my car when I heard the news acoupla weeks ago that some idiot had been captured in Afghanistan, an Ameriduhian who'd--joined the Taliban?! I normally have something to snarl back at the news, but I just went "HUH? Wha? Taliban?! Joined? WHY? WHA?!"
Once I regained the ability to speak, I thought "Well, that's no dumber than joining the Klan or the American Nazis." Then I realized that isn't much any Ameriduhian can do that's DUMBER than joining the Klan or the Nazis.
My next thought was, "So, have some misogyny problems here, buddy? Got a girlfriend yet?"
This guy should be a footnote. Just a random dumbass with the wrong idea, wrong place, wrongest possible time. But he's some new point of focus now. I mean, does he deserve a Newsweek cover story, or do we really need to read a giant pile of his emails written when he was 14, titled "E-mails from a Traitor"? (Was it traitorous to join the Taliban before 9/11, when Bush didn't give a hyenadont shit about Afghanistan?) You'd think that there would be more important news to report. Like Ashcroft destroying the Constitution.
Of course, this is from "The Standard," which would ignore the guy if he had joined the Klan & killed people at abortion clinics. Note the picture of "General Ashcroft" in the upper corner, decked out as a conquering Caesar. In your dreams, Standard. Your wet dreams.

Oh, great. I'm a robot from "The Black Hole," a 1978 Disney ripoff of Star Wars that was more aptly titled than they knew.
I think what happened here is that I clicked on the wrong button, hitting "No" when I was asked if I "had respect for human life." You'd have to get a bit more precise in the definition, like "stupid human life," before I'd answer that in the negative.
I didn't retry the quiz, as I might've ended up with a different "Black Hole" robot. Like those flying PortaPotties which were named "B.O.B." or something equally stupid. If I'd made that movie, I would've had Ernest Borgnine turn out to be a robot. He'd rip off his plastic face & scream "BOW before the might of BORG-9!!" Then he'd fight a giant robot Navy captain called Leadbottom.

Snard sends a link from the Land of the Hello Kitty Vibrator: Hello Doggie Dildo!
He also has a memory of fighter ace, Richard Bong:
"I drive past this park every time we go down to my mom’s place. I didn’t realize it was named after a WWII ace until I was pretty much grown up. And as a kid, I had no idea what a ‘bong’ was, other than a sound made by a bell."
MONTY PYTHON: "What's brown 'n' sounds like a fighter ace? BONNNGGG!"

Pigdog, again, has its Annual Xmas Story Contest, this time with the theme of "HOES! HOES! HOES! A Very Pimpin' Christmas!"
I am still unhappy over losing to a crappy drawing of a squirrel:

12/13

Quote of the Day:
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." --Ambrose Bierce

A guy today at the liquor store was disappointed when we didn't have any Mickey's Big Mouths (a type of cracker malt liquor, they have a website). He was going to Ozzfest tonight. I guessed that this was the Ozzfan drink of choice, but it turns out that another guy in the store was buying FOR Ozzy! Yeah, that's his job at the local performance venue, making the performers happy. Ozzy's entourage wanted Heineken (but only in the can), a case of Evian, celery, and a "fresh, crushed orange." What, no bats?

Is it a quote from 1950s alcoholic Commie-witch-hunter Joe McCarthy, or born-again Confederacy-loving witch-hunter John Ashcroft? (I got 12 right)

Ever wonder what the REAL story was behind Britney's Brand-New Breasts? Me neither, but here's the shocking truth.

I spotted an ad in Cool & Strange Music! Magazine for another magazine, Hitch, "The Journal of Pop Culture Absurdity." Sounds right up my alley, & there's a free Adult Swim CD with the latest issue--Hell, I have a $5 PayPal credit from my Road Warrior action dollies, so I subscribed for a year ($16). The website has a review of a video I'd rather read about than watch, Japanarama:
"But it’s not just the ladies who act like total fools. The men are given ample opportunity, too. Some are dressed up like possums – complete with plastic genitals – and made to “play possum” while their laughing friends drop basketballs on their stomachs, dump a live frog in their suit, submit them to electric shocks or stick them on nausea-inducing carnival rides. Less harmful but more gut-busting – literally – has guys eating sushi laced with hot mustard and drinking a glass of Tabasco sauce. Others merely try to pull the underwear off of each other first, in a memory I’m still trying to shake."

An interesting article on fearing the wrong unknown:
"Indeed, the terrorists may still be killing us, in ways unnoticed. If we now fly 20 percent less and instead drive half those unflown miles as we venture home for the holidays, we will spend 2 percent more time in motor vehicles. This translates into 800 more people dying as passengers and pedestrians. So, in just the next year the terrorists may indirectly kill three times more people on our highways than died on those four fated planes. National Safety Council data reveal that in the last half of the 1990s, Americans were, mile for mile, 37 times more likely to die in a vehicle crash than on a commercial flight."

Star Chaser sends a link on the aforementioned subject of rock stars' odd backstage requests. He says "Hey...Dunno if you already know from this, but you might be interested if not. If you already do, just delete this message before you read it."
Dammit! I'd have to go back in time to delete it before I read it! Everytime that I do that, I step on a butterfly or some shit & fuck all reality up! Well, let's hope it works this time...If I get back to Now & the Nazis won the war, I will be SO pissed at you, Star Chaser!!

Kill Kill has broken the refrigerator.
No, she didn't find a non-white cat hair on me, Hulk out & throw the Hotpoint. The metal grill at the bottom is a prime toy mouse hunting area; in fact, she often deliberately bats mice under there just to enjoy being unable to bat them back out. I guess that the fridge is so old (from the pre-frostfree era) that it just couldn't handle the Killkilling & a soldered clip fell off.
I just took a bunch of old pics off of my crappy digital camera--So old that there were pics from an InExOb still on them! I don't feel like Photoshopping them right now, but tomorrow, there will be some shots of KK Kuteness to behold.

To be honest, I had more to say but this is it. I'm still too burnt out from work. Very busy, you know, so Billy very tired. One delivery involved 7 cases of wine, 750 pounds of ice, & 8 half kegs. 8 kegs is 1,320 12-ounce glasses of beer--Cuz you just know that 1300 glasses won't be enough.
It went to the Bradley Air Museum at the airport, so if you hear about any plane crashes overnight, they're less likely to have been caused by al Qaida than el Drunkos.

DAMN! I went back in time to delete that link Star Chaser gave me, but I stepped on a bug & now everything's so screwed up that STALIN RULES AMERICA! There's mass detentions, no civil rights, & a complete blanket of government surveillance over everything anybody does! Things got so fucked up that Stalin doesn't even have that moustache anymore! And he talks like a semiliterate TEXAN!
Waitaminnit...
Never mind.
This IS reality.

Well, I got your good news, & I got your bad news. The good news: Kill Kill's site has finally begun!
Bad news: the key word here is "begun."
Believe it or not, you're looking at 2 hours worth of work. Part of the problem is that OF COURSE I can't find that damn CD of KK pics, so I have to slowly page through my old, poorly-sorted document files with the vague names. This'll go faster soon, as Kevin's going to upgrade this relic with a new hard drive & a 2gig processor. On the other hand, it finally has begun, so the biggest hurdle may have been passed. It'll definitely be an ongoing project, as I have about 100 pics. Updates will, of course, be announced here, & also on the main index.

I received some fan mail, not from a flounder but from Cheryl Lasher. She wrote back:

"Thanks for replying to my unsolicited praise. Now that you have, I feel we know each other well enough for me to make an offer to you! (Don't worry, it's nothing naughty or disturbing...well, perhaps it is when you consider the subject matter...) Read on, if intrigued...
"Re: Jerry Van Dyke's "Soda Shoppe" in Benton, Arkansas.
"My in-laws live in Hot Springs, so we are through Benton on a semi-annual basis for holiday visits, etc. Knowing your glowing admiration/strange obsession/gleeful amusement with JVD, I thought I might offer to you that the next time we pass through Benton, we'll stop by and check the place out for you. Take some pictures, collect some souvenirs, perhaps even brave the menu and then share our experience with you."

Possibly I upset the Karmic balance by crowing about how I got my Xmas shopping done in early November, as I forced to go to the Mall Friday...for the same reason as last time, listening to headphones in near-total darkness & squishing my glasses. They didn't break this time, but got so bent that it felt like they were focusing my eyes into the top of my skull. So I had to go to Sears to get them adjusted before I went blind.
On the other hand, it took 5 minutes & cost me nothing! How was YOUR last Mall trip? HA HA he crows!
But I'll keep my Karma on the plus side by telling you about a site I used for shopping this year, giftcertificates.com. It's a really great idea. You can buy "Supercertificates" online that are redeemable in over a hundred brick & mortars of the recipient's choice. They'll need internet access to use them, but you can also get store-specific ones that even the Luddites can use. And they can be mailed right to the person, cutting down the lead time for that person you forgot about.
I got your good news, I got your bad news...A big parcel of Liverpool real estate has just been bought & it includes the Cavern Club, where the Beatles got their start. Fortunately, they're not tearing it down to build a mall. Instead, they're BUILDING A MALL AROUND IT.
That's just wrong. Twist & Shop. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Gap For Kids. Here Comes the Sunglass Hut. They should call it "Nowhere Mall."

Technical difficulty: I left a jump-to in the wrong spot, so you were taken to the 12/13 entry instead of yesterday's announcement that the Kill Kill page has started. Info is above.
Hotmail has its own difficulties of late, so I went to the "report a bug" section & told them that signatures no longer are added to mail, & "save draft" is actually "erase draft." They promptly responded, which I will quote in full:

null

If you read just about any old-timer's blog or LiveJournal last week, you know that Google has put 20 years of Usenet posts up. Interesting if you were on Usenet 10 years ago, not all that interesting if you weren't. My introduction to the online world was a 1995 Compuserve free trial floppy & a 14.4 modem. So I really never even saw the Internet, just the Web.
Yahoo!s Picks of the Week takes its cue from the Google event, & this week looked at a bunch of their old firsts, such as the 1st Picks of the Week in '95, or "As we so eloquently proclaimed in February of '96, we picked these sites 'because we think they are good.' With such unbridled excitement surrounding this batch, we scrapped the one-sentence description we'd been employing and described these sites with entire paragraphs, some as long as seven sentences!"
They list 7 firsts, & for some reason one is "First British Invasion:"

"During the halcyon days of early '99, boy bands like the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC were ruling the charts. However, in the spirit of Picks of the Week, we ignored Justin, A.J., Howie, et al, and focused on the bands the British invasion left behind. Wee Willy and the Wombles provided a vehicle for Mark Ryden's art exhibit, while Yogesh, Kamlesh, and Kaushik warbled about mums and curries. But the real winner in this group was a young, brash group called The Picadilly Willies. In fact, several months later, the band's meteoric rise, and subsequent tragic fall, were fodder for a classic Behind the Music."

It's early still, & I have no great inclination to go driving in freezing rain, so I may post more here later today. If I can find the pics I need, there may an update on KK's korner.

Re Yahoo!: Nevermind!
There was a link missing from the email version that's present in the web version that makes it clear that they weren't talking about the InExOb, but the "Second British Invasion" story. Ah, well. My 15 minutes were up years ago anyway.
Though I did get this referrer. Anyone sprechen zee Deutsch?

American Stalinism: Ask for stamps without The Flag on them, & the cops will be called.

A fascinating Wired article on autism & techies. "The chilling possibility is that what's happening now is the first proof that the genes responsible for bestowing certain special gifts on slightly autistic adults - the very abilities that have made them dreamers and architects of our technological future - are capable of bringing a plague down on the best minds of the next generation. For parents employed in prominent IT firms here, the news of increased diagnoses of autism in their ranks is a confirmation of rumors that have quietly circulated for months. Every day, more and more of their coworkers are running into one another in the waiting rooms of local clinics, taking the first uncertain steps on a journey with their children that lasts for the rest of their lives."

On a lighter note, apparently Seanbaby isn't dead, given this article on The Soapy Dead. "Moving the Soap Mummy to a laboratory to get poked at by a bunch of non-combat-trained scientists and just hoping it doesn't come back to life is ridiculous. That's exactly how Body Gel Wolfman and Antiperspirant Frankenstein escaped."
And also "You don't need a sniperscope to spot the gosh-a-mighty chewy chocolatly goodness of Tootsie Rolls!" And that's not a Seanbaby line, but the actual text of an old stupid comic book ad.

First Israel uses "the War on Terrorism" as an excuse to bomb Palistinian police for NOT being Hamas, now India wants a War on Terrorism of its own--against our new best buds, state-sponsoring-terrorists Pakistan. No biggie; they both just have nuclear weapons.
Potential Mideast war? Potential nuclear war? That's not news! MEANWHILE, here's what JOHN WALKER THE TALIBOY had for BREAKFAST ten years ago!

Oh! Poor Sky Dalton! Poor Sky, so much sadder and cuter than Morrissey! Now we know why you're so poor! Earthlink was just another damn pyramid/Ponzi/MLM scheme! Oh, poor, poor Sky's portfolio!

New KK update.

The absolute least enticing subject line in a SPAM: "Save $3.35 with free grocery coupons you can print from your computer!" Wow. $3.35, eh? And britney43001578@suckersreadtheseemails.com is offering free blowjobs in her subject lines. Tough choice. *delete*

"It may be summer before we actually get to make the sacred pilgrimage to the temple of JVD. But then, isn't Benton, Arkansas best experienced in the sweltering sticky heat of July? Hell, I get a sweltering sticky feeling just thinking about the savings I get from shopping at Big!Lots. Actually, my morbid curiosity is whether or not the food served at Jerry's Soda Shoppe uses any of the fine quality ingredients found at B!L. *grin* or *grimace*"

Liliana says "If I had ANY $$, *this* would SO be your Xmas gift." To which I answered, "I will never say this to anyone ever again: I am so glad that you don't have any $$!"

Who REALLY rules the World? Is it--THE ILLUMINATI?
I caught a bit of NPR's "All Things Considered" today, a trailer for a story on what the airports are doing with all those deadly weapons that they're taking from potential terrorists, like nail clippers. "We thought about using them to make a statue in honor of the people who died on 9/11," said Some Guy. "Or donating them to charity."
A statue made of nail clippers? How about one made of the wreckage of the WTC? Or melted-down Taliban guns, with Osama in a little fishtank window looking out? Cheeze Louise, go make a patriotic snowman out of Cool Whip, but NAIL CLIPPERS? "Yes, Johnny, this is how we made America safe from EVIL PEDICURISTS."
And imagine the look of joy on a poor child's face--He never knew Daddy, his Mom was killed while waitressing at Top of the World, he has no health care, he now has to live with relatives he barely knows, he hasn't slept a full night since 9/10 thinking of his mother, but on Christmas Day he gets a pair of used nailclippers! Crimeny.
If you're wondering what does happen to those things, the airlines "don't give out that kind of information." Gourd forbid if al Qaida ever finds our secret stockpile of nailclippers.
"The Tampa Tribune reported in October that 8,626 items had been seized since Sept. 11. On the list: 42 cans of Mace, more than 600 knives, one scalpel, more than 260 corkscrews, seven rounds of ammunition, two spoons, a jar of rubber cement, three candles, six batteries, 993 pairs of tweezers, and 2,137 pairs of scissors."
The knives, the Mace, okay. Even the scissors I can see. A terrorist might run with those, and don't come crying to ME when you put your eye out, Mr Mullah! But ammo without guns? Spoons? Corkscrews, candles, tweezers, rubber cement?! Who do they think is hijacking these planes, MacGuyver?
Next, airport security will be standing at the metal detectors with huge forceps:
SECURITY: Give up those dangerous pointy weapons!
PASSENGER: The what? HEY! Those are my INCISORS!
SECURITY: Open wide, say "ahh!"
PASSENGER: AaaahhhhAAARRRRGGGHH!
SECURITY: Hmm, gold fillings! Are you funneling this money to terrorists? Or this semi-eaten Altoid?

Who REALLY rules the World?
Well, it looks like the Mideast peace talks are finally underway, thanks to that beloved warm-hearted peace-monger Saddam Hussein. Rejecting the black&white "We are good, everybody else is bad" line of Israeli & American thought, he says that it's all the fault of Israel & America.
ISRAEL: It's all Hamas' fault, bomb Arafat's police!
HAMAS: It's all the Israelis' fault, kill more people at bus stops!
MOLTAR: Blah diddy blah!
ZORAK: Blah diddy blah blah blahh!
And, on the same day, the steadfast opponents of all terrorists (except their own) & America's closest ally for, what, 3 months now, Pakistan, blames the pro-Pakistani attack on India's parliament on--The Indians! Ahh, yes, & one supposes that 5,000 Hindus were told not to go to work there that day. But what makes it even better?
``We are ready to give a firm assurance that if, on the basis of a joint inquiry, anybody based in Pakistan is found involved in the attack, we will proceed against him,'' [Pakistani official] Qureshi said."
"NO! NO, REALLY!" Qureshi yelled over the raucous laughter of the Pakistan parliament. "No, seriously, we'll be on those ba-a-ad Pakistanis like ugly--ON A HINDU!" Once everyone had cleaned up the milk that they'd squirted out of their noses, Qureshi continued, "But we do have this police sketch of the likely perpetrator!" He held up a picture of a pig with Ghandi's head superimposed on it. "Yes, it's--MAHATMA HAM-DI!" Everyone was laughing so hard, they soiled their robes. "And don't forget his daughter--INDIR-ARNOLD ZIFFLE!" Silence, with a few coughs. "What? Don't you get it? Green Acres? Arnold was a PIG!" "Oh, I get it!" said an American general, in support of his terrorist-fighting new best bud. And there was much, much laughter.
Laughter of the at kind, not the with kind.
"Looks like it's time for a PIG ROAST!" yelled Qureshi, holding up a picture of a mushroom cloud. And that brought down the house!
It brought down houses all over the world, eventually...

Who REALLY rules the World?
The writers for The Onion. They're making this shit up just to make life easier for them.

"Have a happy holiday!" people kept telling me at work, & I'd say "You, too!" with a little cartoon cloud with a "?" in it floating above my head. I mean, Christmas is so far away!
Waitaminnit--It's Monday!
That's the difference between Retail and Liquor Retail. Sure, it's busier, but it's not the all-engulfing, smothering, body-heat-of-the-damned busier you get working in the Mall. It's parking four spaces away from the store, not 1400 yards away from the Mall. It's talking to ONE customer, instead of 9 at once. It's like staying one step ahead of a creeping glacier, not trying to outrun an bonecrushing avalanche for 6 weeks.
Man, I wish that I'd explored this retail career path 14 years earlier than I did.

Damn funny Bleat from James Lileks today. Of special interest to readers of this page: "Got three boxes from Amazon today, including a gift for myself: the New York PBS documentary on 97 DVDs. Or so it seems. It’s by that BURNS documentarian! Read the fine print, and it’s not Ken but his brother Rick. Hmm. This might seem a bit like getting the VAN DYKE COMEDY CLASSICS tape and find[ing] out it’s 100% Jerry..."
I love this guy, the don't-call-me-Jim James Lileks. There's been a link on my page to his since the summer of '97, I bought 3! copies of his "Regrettable Food" book this Xmas, using the Amazon link on his page so he gets more money (Jessica loved hers, Mr Lileks, & everybody's going to get the Interior Desecrators book next year when it's out), and there's the possibility that you guys are only reading these words because of him.
In '99 I read a Bleat that he wrote about taking his dog for a walk in the park at night, & seeing an owl. That was it. That's all that happened. But it was so well-written that I read it 3 times in a row. "I'll never be that good a writer," I sighed. Then I realized that I wasn't going to get any better by NOT writing. And What's New On This Page, which updated every 3 months or so, became The News, which usually updates daily.
But then came September 11th, & Everything Changed.
That instant cliche was 1st said, I think, on 9/12, around noon. But it was true: Now you knew everyone's political views.
Lileks had been so free of political views, it made me think that he had none. Odd, in that his wife is an attorney general or such. But then it turned out that he was most conservative, of the "America has never done anything wrong, and anyone who questions that is supporting the enemy!" stripe. I don't see how anyone, especially obviously very intelligent people, can't look at our histories with Iran/Iraq/Afghanistan/[fill in blank; Pakistan looks like the next safe bet] & not realize that, umm, yeah, we aren't thinking these things THROUGH very well, & questioning our actions might HELP next time. Or how a professional journalist couldn't have any worries about the U.S.A.P.A.T.R.I.O.T. bill (although I assume that you think everything the Gummint does is okay, you don't have to worry about some future Homeland Ministry of Love threatening your face with caged starving rats some day).
I have no problem with someone deconstructing my personal ideology--it helps me think clearer--but James only goes after those fish-in-a-barrel leftie columnists, who bear about as much resemblance to me & my Liberal friends as the average Conservative does to Jerry Falwell or Augusto Pinochet.
I don't dislike America (hey, I LIVE here, don't I?). But I hate STUPIDITY. If I lived in Montreal, I've no doubt that I'd be bitching about "Cana-duh-ians." I don't think that you're unAmerican if you criticise this country. I think it's more unAmerican to blindly, stupidly accept whatever you're told by the mass media & the government & never voting, while you fret about what will happen on "Friends" this week. Then you're exercising as much of your rights as you would living in China, just with much better TV shows. Hey, sorry, but I LIKE separation of Church & State, I LIKE Checks & Balances that keep one part of the government--ESPECIALLY the Executive Branch, no matter what party's in power--IN CHECK, and I REALLY LIKE FREEDOM OF SPEECH. If you like faith-based initiatives, the suspension of civil rights, & hate free speech, then GO BACK TO THE TALIBAN WHERE YOU CAME FROM, COMMIE!!
*ahem*
Sorry. Went just a tad off-topic there.
Lileks goes a tad astray himself at times. Why did John "Dipshit" Walker become a Talibanian? His parents were Liberals! Why did the Columbine library get filled with corpses? Parents weren't strict enough! Last week, when he opened his Bleat with the words "Wynona Ryder" & "hippy parents" in the same sentence, I just groaned "Let me guess: That's why she became a shoplifter, & her parents are lucky that she didn't join the Taliban."
Right the 1st time.
Though he did exceed my expectations, saying that her damn hippy parents were lucky that she didn't join the Taliban all "furry-legged." Apparently, he'd discovered some heretofore unknown causal link between the crime rate & women who don't use Nair. (And I don't know what the percentage of female Taliban fighters are, but I'll guess that if you don't let your wife even go to a doctor, you'd be purty dense to give her an AK-47 & a camouflaged burqa. "Oppressed honey, I'm HOME! Honey? Worthless chattel honey? Where are you?" "Here." RATATATAT!!)
Why did Timothy McVeigh blow up the Oklahoma City Federal building? His parents were Bella Abzug & Ralph Nader!! The "liberal parents=bad seed" argument works even better, when you consider what model examples of adult maturity Dumbya's daughters Jenna & Mary-Kate are, and how sweet & freedom-loving is the conservative son of that rich oilman Daddy bin Laden. No, wait! Rich conservative oilmen spawn only EVIL! No, wait more! That means that DUMBYA is evil!! Norman, correlate! Norman, correlate! *BaNg!*
I'm sure that if Lileks' own kid becomes a shoplifter in 15-20 years, Lileks will be forced to hang his head in shame & admit that he, as a parent, NEVER should have let her be friends with those LIBERAL kids! No way it his fault, like every parent of a bad kid has said since Unngh used his flint-knapping skills to stab Og over that mastodon meat 40,000 years ago. "Unngh hang out with wrong crowd! Those Cro-Magnon kids, them have brows not sloped enough!"
And I wouldn't put it past him to do that--A coupla months ago, when newspaper syndicates started refusing to run the "Boondocks" comic strips because they actually questioned the Standard View of the War, Lileks complained that any writer knows that if someone refuses to run his work, it's because it's just no good. Yeah, well, I thought, I'll bet that you'd feel differently if it was you getting rejected.
A coupla days ago, he made a phone call to find out why he'd been turned down for a radio talk show. "We want more diversity" he was told, & he shot back/spent a whole Bleat that he was disgusted that he was turned down "because of my RACE!" Ahh yes, middle-aged heterosexual white male Conservative Christian rich guys. The most oppressed minority in America. What?! Don't like America, rich guy?! Go back to Talibania, where everyone's poor & Muslim, & see how you like it THERE, COMMIE!
But I kid the Lileks. I like the Lileks. But my parents were liberals, & his views of late are like a friend suddenly worried that you'll steal his wallet & his job because of that.

Lynda Barry: "Jingle Fred Milton is #1!"

If there's a link here, that means that there's a

Now that was a funny Mysting! Even the original comic had a lot of laughs, especially the dialogue from the Gontichrist himself.

"bill splut"

Tired of those Internet tests? Let Sanity Clause tell you if you're Naughty or Nice! (Thanks, Starchaser!)
Not being "Nice" seems to be about as difficult as not losing Florida when you're brother's the governor. And as equally random, as the next time I submitted "bill splut" I was told that I was "Much more nice than naughty. Can be very thoughtful. Has improved cleanliness, which I like." (sniffs armpits) Thanks, I like it too. But, Sanity, that's "very thoughtviperful."
Say, is that a snake in Naughty Elf's trousers, or is he just jolly to see me? And I'll bet that the elves slaving away in Santa's Toy Sweat Shop think that the smug-ass Nice Elf is the most total prick at the North Pole. And take careful note of where Santa keeps the African-Arctican elves.
The "Nice-O-Meter" seems to be a giant thermometer, but then why isn't it called the "Nice-OM-Eter"? It could also be an item from the Dinosaur Marital Aid catalog, the "Tyrannosaurus SEX Anal Probe." Note it's connected to a Venus Butterfly. It's Nice AND Naughty!

"osama bin laden"

Hey, Santy, the Nice-O-Meter needs adjustment again.

Greetings from my friend Scott!

Good ol' Scott, with his festively-decorated Christmas skeleton, & a fresh pile of snow shoveled on a newly-dug grave! "God Damn Us One & All!"
But I kid the Scott.

Just in time for HELL Xmas, comes the always entertaining Onion Cheap Toy Roundup. Highlight: Barbie as a McDonalds worker. When I managed a Kay Bee Toys, she was a rock star. Maybe this represents Paula Abdul's career path.

Warning: incoming dream description.

I'm a congressman from Connecticut, visiting Mrs Bush at the White House. Mrs Bush looks exactly like Dubya, right down to the suit, but everybody's calling her "Mrs Bush," so who I am to rock the boat? The Secret Service ushers 2 Girl Scouts into the room, and they give Mrs Bush & his/her friends cookies--oatmeal raisin with mushrooms. "I didn't know that mushrooms came on anything but pizza!" says Mrs Bush excitedly. Oh, there's other types of mushrooms, I say without elaborating. They gobble up the cookies, but I don't get any because I'm not a Republican.
Suddenly they all start laughing & dancing & acting crazy. Those are psychedlic mushrooms! I run outside the room to tell the Secret Service, but they & dozens of Girl Scouts ate the cookies too, & they're all bouncing off the walls. I run down the stairs, but the next floor has hundreds of tripping little girls. I keep heading downstairs, which is a ways as the White House is a standard tall business office building, except for the fact that the basement is a sports arena & there's a professional basketball game going on. The players & the thousands of spectators are tripping. GREAT, I think, all these people ate the cookies too, but they wouldn't give me even ONE!
I run back upstairs. Mrs Bush & the Cabinet are dancing on the table wearing flowers.
I dial 911. "Mrs Bush is tripping her brains out! We need an ambulance!" The irritated cop says "This is 911! We don't care about the President! That's the job of the Secret Service. To call their emergency line, dial 450." CLICK.
Hmm. 450, that I didn't know. So I dial 450.
"This is the Secret Service Emergency Line!" says a voice, but before I can say anything else, it tells me that "This line is ONLY for emergencies involving the President, for anything else, dial 911." And I realize that the voice is a recording. I keep waiting for it to say "Dial 1 to report a Presidential emergency," but the recording keeps droning on about this is ONLY for emergencies, really big emergencies that need an immediate response, dial 450 if the President is being robbed, but dial 911 if it isn't the President being robbed, blah blah blah. After a few minutes, I think, Hey, this isn't the President anyway, it's the President's wife! And why do I care anyway? It's not like they gave me any fuckin' cookies!
So I hang up & go back to CT. I go to the liquor store--which only sells used video games, & is in somebody's living room--and ask Jessica if she wants to go see a movie. But 1st, meet my new kitten! Kill Kill is playing with the kitten quite happily. The kitten is Kill Kill at 6 weeks. I put KK (current version) in my coat pocket to take her to the movies with us. Then I wake up with her using my hip pocket area as a pillow.
The Jessica part is prly because I'm going over to her place in a few minutes, & giving her part 2 of her Xmas gift. Shelley found a mom & pop video store that had 2 15-year-old Jem & The Holograms videos, & she copied them for me. I hope that she doesn't want to watch all 3 hours. That would make me wish that I had some cookies.

Frontiers in terrorism: Exploding sneakers.
I don't think we're looking at a bin Laden plot here. Since what tipped the stewardess off was him lighting a match, if the genius had taken a cigarette lighter instead, he might've succeeded. In giving himself a hot foot, that is, since "Although large amounts of C-4 can explode if they are burned, small amounts are unlikely to be detonated without a blasting cap."
The creepy part is the plane being escorted home by F15 fighter jets. Was it in case the infamous Al Qaeda Air Force swooped out of the sky? No, it was more likely to shoot the airliner down if a group of nailclipper-wielding terrorists took it over...

A guy with the ability to identify a piece of classical music merely by looking at the grooves of a record. Psychic powers? No, he just noticed something that I also noticed back in the days of vinyl & cassette tapes: If I wanted to find the loudest point on an LP to set the recording level, I'd go to the lightest set of grooves on it. That's where the music was the loudest. This guy, however, took it to a much higher level, even being able to tell on 1 record that it was a German orchestra performing.

I carried a case of Sam Adams Winter Lager out to a customer's car yesterday. She popped the trunk, saying "I wonder what's in here." There was 1 of those wheeled golf bag carriers (but no golf bag), & something else.
ME: "Why is there an anvil in your trunk?" HER: "It's my boyfriend's car." ME: "Why does your boyfriend's car have an anvil in it?" HER: "I dunno!"
I suppose you should have something with which to defend yourself, in case you get carjacked by Wile E. Coyote.

Another reason to hate the cable companies: "'Looser' rules will very likely also mean higher cable rates for consumers; since the deregulatory Telecommunications Act of 1996, cable rates have risen nearly three times as fast as inflation.
"Those concerned about preserving the democratic potential of the Internet should take heed: 'AOL Time Warner and other cable companies are seeking to dramatically overturn the limits on cable system ownership precisely so they can control the key access point for the Internet marketplace,' explains the Center for Digital Democracy."

I guess that this is the first of the Pigdog Xmas stories. It sure beats that damn squirrel!

I'm all cozy warm in the fleece pullover Jessie gave me. Just the thing for working in the beer cooler. And she was most grateful for her Jem video. "I don't know what to do, watch Jem or play video games!" she said. "First, let's watch acoupla Jems, then play Super Joy!" said I, in my Solomonic wisdom.
I'd seen Jem a few times, back in the days when I was a toy store manager & every cartoon on TV was a 30-minute toy ad. Usually, the toy came first, then they made a cartoon around the product line (Anybody remember "Super Naturals"? They were action figures with holograms in their chests, for no reason other than that they'd found the technology to cheaply put holograms in their chests. Understandably, the cartoon reverse-engineered to explain this concept failed to catch on). So I'd seen 'em all: GI Joe, Masters of the Universe, even such forgotten shows as "The Bionic Six." Jem was the only one that really seemed to have stand-alone potential. I think that if they'd just played up the soap-opera angle with a continuing story line, it really might've proved addictive with little girls (though it did run for 3 years or so).
There was plenty to make fun of in Jem. I mean, if you thought real 80s chicks had big hair, imagine what their cartoon counterparts looked like! Like Dolly Parton showing all her wigs off at once, is what. There was a guy named "TechRat" who made Evil Inventions, like a long-distance computer scrambler, and I'll bet was voiced by the same guy as Cobra Commander on GI Joe (was he born with his larynx in his nostrils, or what?). Or the Dept of Youth Services guy, having heard that 3 of Jem's foster children had run away (yes, the DYS decided that the proper place to raise foster children was a rock star's mansion), was told/lied to that the runaways were "handing out flyers" & he said "Well, okay, but if they're not back in a few days, there'll be an investigation!" "But...they're handing the flyers out...on the MOON!" "Well, okay, but if in 6 months I point my telescope at the Moon, & I don't see them, I might do something about that!"
But I'll give it credit--we saw a 2-part episode called "The Music Awards." And I'm so sure that Jem will lose, I thought. But she DID! The evil rock band The Misfits--not The Misfits, the real-life band (sorry, Scott!)--won the award, & went to a benefit concert Jem was giving to "wave this award under her nose!" When they got to the concert, the crowd was doing the Wave to a Jem song about Friendship Being The Most Important Thing, & it was such a lovefest that Pizzazz, the Misfits' version of Jem, just stood there with her mouth open until the award fell from her hands to break on the floor. It's the fact that she didn't say a single word to hammer home Today's Important Lesson that impressed me. Most cartoons assume that kids are too stupid to grasp anything that isn't spelled out.
When the third episode started, I said, "Welp, time to play video games!" and you should've seen the pouty frown on Jessie's face. She'd sunk into the couch like a little kid would have, just like she probably did back when she first watched Jem. I get the feeling that that tape's going to get a lot of use.
And I got something useful out of it myself. Jess is so amused by the fact that I had my high school graduation picture taken wearing a leisure suit that, when she's depressed, both her fiance & her mother can cheer her up just by saying "Bill in a leisure suit!" But I discovered from the cartoon that Jess used to wear LEG WARMERS. NOW we're even! Because when you work out, only your shins get cold.

Hey, kids! It 's Christmas Eve! And you know who YOU'LL be getting a visit from tonight!!

Here comes Santa Corpse, Here comes Santa Corpse,
Scratching at his coffin lid!
Bringing the gift of human brains to every zombie kid!
Blood is spewing, zombies chewing,
The Mall's like "Dawn of the Dead,"
Hang your stockings & say your prayers
While Santa Corpse gnaws on your head!

And people say that I have no Christmas spirit.

"And may all your Christmas cats be white." (Thanks, Lilly & kids!)

Santa Corpse was good to me, giving some work shirts & some gift certificates & not eating my brains. 1 shirt is in a color that I own of the exact same style, but that might make a good keep-in-the-car shirt (Ever wonder what would happen if 1 of those Guinness-style "pub draft" cans with the widget inside broke? I did for 4 years, in the "I'd rather not find out" sense of wondering. Over Xmas I found out 4 times in 3 days: they explode like grenades; the entire can's contents spray out in 1 second; if it's on the floor & it gets tapped the wrong way, it sprays beer as high as my shirt). The gift certificates became "Civilization III" (which will have to wait until the Pookie gets its brain transplant before it can be played), Donna "Kooks" Kossy's Strange Creations, & Aphex Twins' latest CD.
I got a big box of Mom's Home Cookin', so I don't have to do more than reheat food for a month or so. Which is good, since my work Xmas bonus has for years been grocery store certificates, but this year was gas cards. Given how little gas my car uses & how cheap gas is, I'm looking at free gas until July or August.

Kirk mentioned my Anvil Story, with the comment "He works at a booze (or 'package'? Is he that New Englandy?) store."
A "package store" is a New Englandism for liquor store, so called because it was once the law that you couldn't buy alcohol without it being put in a paper bag before you left the Packy. Yeah, weird, but CT had "Blue Laws" right up to the late 60s. They were so-called because they were supposedly from a book of laws written up with a blue cover--written up by the freakin' Puritans in the 1600s or something. One forbade any stores to be open on Sunday except pharmacies. The only thing I liked about church as a kid in the late 60s was that we'd go to the drug store--the only place open-- & I could spend my meager allowance on a Seven Up (not the soda, but the candy--a chocolate bar with 7 different fillings!) & MAD, Cracked, Sick & Not Brand Ecch. The purpose of the Blue Laws was to reinforce the moral rectitude of God's Laws, but reading the "kid's" humor magazines of the time helped make me what I am today. An athiest.
Wow, this went far afield. I guess it's because I had a reunion with an old childhood friend yesterday, Jan Warren. Hadn't seen her since age 14; her parents came to my father's funeral, she visited my mom, she got in touch with me.
Back in the day, she lived at the end of my street (about a 1/8 mile away; it always seems in my memory to be the longest street in the world). My dad was Democratic town chairman through the 60s & 70s, her dad was Republican town chairman. Yet they introduced each other as "my friend," which was the truth. Jan liked to play with me, rather than the girls; I've always preferred to be friends with the girls instead of the boys. Her parents wanted Suzy Homemaker. My parents wanted Joe Jock. She's now a lesbian art teacher & I'm a scrawny cat-loving weirdo.
I think things worked out okay.
Umm, yes, far afield. All I wanted to do was set up my response to Kirk about package stores:

I try to say "liquor store" instead of "package store" as much as possible on the page, so that them damn foreigners (ie, people not from New England) know what I'm talking about. I was once enough of a provincial bumpkin that when I went to college in Ohio I asked people if they wanted to hit up the package store, & they thought that I meant a gift shop.
A few months back, an old man walked into the store & asked "Where's the package store?" Three of us were working, & none of us knew what to say (in retrospect, I wished that I'd said "You're soaking in it!"). Eventually we figured out that he wanted a Mail Boxes & Etc-type place up the road called "The Packaging Store."

12/28

The runner-up on the Pigdog Xmas story contest is a LOT funnier than the winner. But both are free of squirrels.

Speaking of Pigdog, Mr Bad thinks that the feared Y2K "disaster" will happen in Y2.2K.

"What I've Learned," by God. "First time I met Moses, I thought, This guy has a lot of ear hair."

"EEP! EEEP! EEEEK EEEK!!" shrieked Infinite Typing Monkey #1,387,112, as he jumped up & down at his typewriter.
The other Infinite Monkeys in the 1,387,100th room ran over to him to see what he'd written. Then they began screaming & jumping, too.
The Screaming Monkey Alert went off at Central Control. The Project Manager blearily raised his eyes from a nearly perfect rendition of "King Lear," which only failed the "Roomful of Infinite Typing Monkeys Recreating the Works of Shakespeare" requirement by renaming Lear as "King Smelly Paws Monkey at Next Desk Throw Poops at Me." The alert button was red. Deep red.
"Magenta alert!" he thought. This could be the end of this project! This very important project! This infinitely long project! This fucking stupid idiot project!
He ran to room 1,387,100 in such haste that he forgot how goddamn bad those monkey rooms stank. Forgot for a moment, that is. Choking back his gag reflex, he ran to the thick stack of typing paper by Typing Monkey #1,387,112's unopposable thumb. Typing Monkey #1,387,112 thumped the stack as he bounced in triumph.
The Project Manager grabbed the floppy marked "Richard the Third" from the electronic typewriter. "Calm down, Typing Monkey #1,387,112! There's sure to be bananas & hot monkey sex with an attractive chimp whore tonight for you!" He ran the disk through the ShakesPlayChek (TM).
Typing Monkey #1,387,112 tried to be a good monkey. He didn't get mad at the grinding noise from the hard drive. He didn't fear the flashing, meaningless symbols on the monitor that the Manager called "words." He just wanted to use his fingers for something other than infinite typing. Like picking delicious lice off of his betters.
"Yes! YES! YESSSS!" cried the Manager as the program checked the monkey's recreated play. "It's PERFECT so far!" The damn project! It was OVER! God only knew what it was for in the first place! God, & whatever lunatic funded it!
All the monkeys had stopped typing. They watched, & hoped that their insane imprisonment would end soon. Some fidgeted, thinking of the all the time that had been stolen from their lives. Time spent typing random garbage that they didn't understand, for a reason unknown.
"NOOOOOOO!"
The monkeys scattered at the Manager's scream, running to the corners of Room #1,387,100, & shrieking back in fear. "What the HELL is THIS?!" he barked at Typing Monkey #1,387,112.
The terrified chimp looked at the symbols on the screen, but only because the Banana-Giving Hairless One was pointing there. The symbols meant nothing to him.
"You wrote 'A horse! A horse! My kingdom for JO-JOY MEETS CHRISTOPHER THE COLLAPSIBLE HORSE'?!?! How many Goddamn YEARS are we gonna be DOING this, you FUCKING LITTLE BASTARDS?!"
As the Manager raised his hand to smack the chimp, the lights in the room dimmed & flashed. A voice came from the ceiling speakers:
"Project is Complete. Monkeys are free to leave."
There was a pause. The monkeys looked at the Manager. The Manager looked at the monkeys.
The Manager picked up a dung-plastered phone & called Central Control. "Is this for real--" He listened to a voice, a very excited voice to the monkeys' ears. He slowly put the phone down, as he stared into the distance. The monkeys looked nervously at him, & each other.
"YEAH, BOY!" he screamed, & began smashing the typewriters.
The monkeys recoiled at first. But the Manager gleefully showed the monkeys how to smash the typewriters with other typewriters. The monkeys ran amuck, paper flew, floppies were stamped on. "BANANAS FOR EVERYONE!" he yelled, & smashed open the food storage lockers.

There was a secret room in Central Control. A blue light that had never been lit was the only feature on its one computer. A Supreme Project Manager stared at it for years. It lit up when Infinite Monkey #21,005,846,955 pressed just the right sequence of random keys. There were no screaming monkeys, just a CDR that popped out of a drive, and a message "FILE COMPLETE" on a blue screen.
The SPManager took the elevator to the -1000th floor, a floor well below sea level beneath the Infinite Monkey Project. A pair of giant doors opened to a cavernous room. The SPM walked the long distance to a desk shrouded in darkness, & proudly laid the CDR on it.
"As you have bid, My Lord, it is done!" He bowed & exited. He went to announce that the project was over, and that the monkeys were free.
A hand reached over the desk & grasped the disk. "Yesss," he hissed. "This dark work is done!"
He pressed a button on his intercom. "Alice? Call marketing. It is READY!"
He gave himself a moment of triumph, leaning back in his chair & letting the disk reflect what little light existed in his chambers. "You will serve me WELL, little one!"
Then, taking a Sharpie marker from his desk drawer, Bill Gates scribbled "XP" on the disc.

12/29

Looking for kitty advice: Kill Kill has always had a full bowl of food out for her, as she never ate all that much. It took her about 4 days to eat through her Hello Kitty rice bowl. About 2 months ago, it took her 2 days; now, it takes her one. And she's getting chubby, even if her activity level doesn't seem diminished.
So, is this something to worry about? Or is it normal for a 2&1/2-year-old cat to eat more in the winter? Email address is on the main page.

Told ya.
I told you why Musharraf became our New Best Bud after being the Taliban's Best Bud. Not because his eyes were opened by their bloodshed, but because he saw that Uncle Sam had "SUCKER" written alll over him. Mushie must be distressed that the war in Afghanistan ended before he could really use us against India, but that may be why Pakistan's state-funded terrorists--who were trained in the same Al Qaida camps as John "Dipshit" Walker!--decided to push the issue with the attack on India's Parliament.
So now there could be war. The "patriotic" right-wingers of India may be pressing for the same thing, a war with Pakistan with America stuck in the middle. Especially since India (like Israel & now Turkey) is using the "terrorist" label against their enemies, so as to make us look like hypocrites if we say anything against their own heavy hands.
Yep. America sure knows how to think things through. Call 'em evil & drop bombs & it'll end right there.
Let's all just hope that this all blows over, & not up.

If I could personify any aspect of my condo, it would be the plumbing. I would personify it as a lazy old slob wearing a tshirt covered in food stains, with bodily effluents leaking from every orifice. That's what it does; leaks or does nothing. Part of the plumbing is the decrepit oil heater, built by the Babylonians in 3000 BCE. You know the old joke, "This house has hot & cold running water--Cold in the winter, hot in the summer"? Well, that's the truth here. In the winter I turn the shower up full blast & hope that the hot water doesn't run out; in the summer, I do the same in order to get the SCALDING water down to a temperature lower than one uses to cook lobsters.
December began with 70 temps outside; it ends below freezing. So today the heat went off. When? When I was in the shower, of course! There's an oil company van outside trying to get it started up again.
Why would I want to personify my plumbing? So that I could BEAT IT TO DEATH WITH A HAMMER.

It was cold enough that Kill Kill, after running around like a crazy person (that chases toy mice) all morning, went to snooze in a pile of my bed clothes. I went to Jiffy Lube.
The car's "SERVICE ENGINE SOON" light came on 2 weeks ago, but I've learned that this sometimes means "SERVICE THIS LIGHT, IT'S ON FOR NO REASON AGAIN." Then the "CHECK COOLANT" light came on. As I needed an oil change anyway, I didn't do anything about that until today. I didn't want to go on a Sunday, but at this time of year my only other days off are major holidays. I hadn't gone to Jiffy Lube in years, but I had new confidence since they replaced the missing letter on their sign, and they were no longer called "Iffy Lube."
"Did you change my oil?"
"It's...possible. Not sure, really. It goes in the gas tank, yes?"
It wasn't too busy, even if the 1st thing I heard when entering the waiting room was a woman bitching about how slow they were ("Slow as molasses!" was her brilliantly constructed metaphor). She was complaining to her sister-in-law, who was there with her kids & her own car, though Jiffy Lube doesn't strike me as a "Fun for all the Family" kind of rendezvous spot. She'd already complained to the guy servicing her car at least once. Five minutes later she was off to bitch again. Odd, I thought, as everyone else's line seems to be moving quick enough. It occurred to me that endless oil changing is prly a shitty job, & someone whining every five minutes--and she continued to go into the garage to bitch every 5 minutes I was there--might inspire you to do her job sloooow.
I got to watch a bit of some idiot WB TV show (wait--"idiot WB show," is that redundant?), some Buffy clone with vampires that turned out to be called "Relic Hunter," so I guess that it was also a "Tomb Raider" ripoff. Yes, you can always recognize a female archeologist by the fact her tits are hanging out all the time.
It took 10 minutes for them to finish the car ahead of me and the cars ahead of the other 2 people there, & a mere 15 minutes each to finish each of our cars. As I left, the Jiffy Luber apologized for "being slow--I didn't want to rush it." "No problem," I smiled, "I'm in no rush!" And guess who was still waiting for molasses to climb uphill...
Sometimes the squeaky wheel doesn't get the grease. It doesn't even get lubed.
(And sometime the courteous wheel doesn't get his coolant checked--I looked at the receipt, & it's the one fluid that they don't top off. So I did it myself when I got home, like I could've done a week ago)

I was recently asked why I hadn't reviewed "The Lord of the Rings." That's because I prefer nice, quiet Monday matinees when school's in session, & my days off haven't cooperated. But after reading Kiru's funny review, there's little left to be said!

Why won't the FBI release the black box recordings from Flight 93? (Unfortunately, you won't find out here; given the contradictory evidence & eyewitnesses & the recent appearance of Exploding Shoe Man, Version 2 seems the most consistent)

First Timers Closeout Envy Puppet Ear!
First Timers Closeout Envy Puppet Ear!!
FIRST TIMERS CLOSEOUT ENVY PUPPET EAR!!!

I woke up to a 10-hour work day this morning, & New Year's Eve is the busiest of all days in the liquor business. And now I'm sick, I think.
Okay, there was a much longer story written in my head to describe it all, but fuck that. I'm tired & sick. Normally I could find something to say about O.J. Simpsons' appearance not only here in CT, not only in East Hartford (you'd have to live here to understand why East Hartford is funny), but also at the Mall that's a mile from my job. Nothing funny tonight, though.