No shirt no shoes some fun.

Just wanted to say a special thanks to all those who made our Memorial Day weekend a blast. Erin and I had a wonderful time, even if our teams didn't win the tournament. We survived an eggshelling, a vulture attack, Sterzy Woozy, Cracker Barrhell, a mean maccaw, The Hardest Avocados Known To Man, Quistaritas, something that's wonderful and HUGE and that will make you glad you stayed, the crow's nest, the odour of sulfur, and several impersonations that are for some reason still hilarious. Vacation me bra!

CNN Ya Latah!

My love-hate relationship with CNN.com, who brings me BREAKING NEWS! Has ended. This is the last straw. They haven't taken any of my constructive criticism to heart and now it's time to say goodbye.

In the great tradition of my coworker Conrad, who boycotts things left and right with seemingly irrevocable logic, I am adding CNN.com to my list. This morning's top story, of all the news in the world, is about a horse's surgery. Sure he won one of the races for the Triple Crown. But the mad and ridiculous rush to cover this minute-by-minute drama forced writers to mispell the word "doctor" in the headline. And they use what I so despise...the dreaded CNN.com "quotation marks" when describing his fate as a "coin toss".

Luckily, Foxnews.com is also running the same story as its headliner. I get to boycott them too, although I've only been there twice! Looks like I'm headed to NPR and Google News where they don't have a single mention of Barbaro's surgery.

---EDIT--- In the time it took me to write this post, the story has changed to "Barbaro eating, flirting with mares". I kid you not. So I gave CNN one last chance. And they disappointed me.

BOYCOTT ON!

You think you're an alcoholic?

I'm all for weirdness. I work at a gaming company. Good times.

I'm even occasionally for a little relaxation. A couple beers. Good times.

But one can go overboard. WAY overboard like a condo tenant in Utah did. In 8 years of living there he filled his condo with about 70,000 empty cans. Almost all of them were Coors Light. That's 24 beers A DAY for 8 years.

He'd shut off his own water and heat. The piles of silver bullets had obscured his furniture and blocked the front door. The cans were worth $800 in recycling, which I am sure pales in comparison to the cleaning bill. The mailman had never delivered mail there.

But every month a check came for the rent.

Here are some obvious questions that really have no possible answer.

• How did his liver survive on 24 beers a day?
• Why did he choose Coors Light?
• How did he avoid junk mail?
• Did he have a sense of smell?
• Why didn't he try to build something out of all those cans?

Some conclusions.

• He was being hunted by werewolves. Coors Light is one of the few things that can stop them.
• He must hate the environment.
• He had one REALLY REALLY big party for the millenium.
• He knows something about beer we don't.
• His name is Barney Gumbell.
• Or He is really David Blaine and has been training for 8 years for his next breath-holding stunt in a tub full of beer.
• He missed his childhood time at Chuck E Cheese.

If you want to see the story, check out CNN.com. Apparently there isn't anything else important going on in the world today.

When your vote woulda counted...

...and you don't use it, it really really is disappointing.

33.06%

33.26%

33.68%

50 million votes.

And America takes out my boy. We'll miss you Elliot!
Stupid stupid stupid other voters who got off their lazy butts.

Split Flea Soup

Ahh, the folly of early science! Oh misaligned humours, oh spiritual justification, oh icky grody symptoms!

It's everybody's favorite pandemic. THE BUBONIC PLAGUE. Sounds kinda scary in a sort of distant past sorta way. Well, worry not dear reader. The past is behind us. An early Europe being held hostage by the whims of an army of dirty fleas is well distant. We owe so much to that time.

• Monty Python and the Holy Grail wouldn't be as complete a masterpiece without its inclusion
• Nobody would be able to imitate the voice of Fantasy Island little person Tattoo in saying "The Plague, boss, the Plague!"
• Chihuahuas wouldn't rise in popularity to the detriment of their pet-competitors, rats
• Ye Olde Headstone Shoppe of York wouldn't have done such a brisk business
• Legends of witches, vampires, and other horrific nasties wouldn't pack the same punch without rumours they were the ones spreading the plague
• The word Ebonics wouldn't sound as sinister as it does to the compassionate conservatives.
  

But, as all exciting things do, the plague has returned. Don't worry Frenchy le Frencher, German von Germanic, Italian Italiani, or neutral Swiss person, its near Salt Lake City!

The hallowed land of the Mormons is under attack from a powerful and evil flea circus. Before you call your relatives there and recommend Xtra Strength Canine Advantix for your uncle's dog Spotty, I'll be more specific. A campground at Natural Bridges National Monument has been closed because of bubonic plague detected among field mice and chipmunks.

Puxatawny Phil, Mickey, Alvin, and friends watch out! Apparently one of those guys got on a plane and flew to Mesa Verde National Park and Colorodo National Monument as well.

"We come down on the conservative side when it comes to closing campgrounds," said Joe Winkelmaier of the US Public Health Service. "We just like to be sure when it comes to plague."

Funny quote Fonz's nephew! Well, good to know that a field full of dead mice catches someone's attention. All I know is I'm going to start putting together a Bubonic Preparedness Kit. Here's what I'm planning on putting in it.

• Plastic sheeting and duct tape. It keeps out anything!
• Something to duck and cover under, like a school desk
• Strategic plans to fight the mice in Iraq instead of here
• Extra toilet paper for the extra diarrhea
• A Hollywood makeup artist to prevent unsightly black patches of the skin
• A fine quill, gilded ink, and anough papyrus to record the collected wealth of our civilization for posterity
• Some tasty cheese to sacrifice to the lead rat
• Pigpen, to whom fleas will flock instead of me

I urge you to do the same.

A softer side of Ned.

If you are about to enter into a stressful situation (such as a job interview), have had a rough day, or just plain want to smile. You must...MUST....check out Cute Overload. I am not joking. It's a freakin cure-all miracle drug.

Pardon me?!

Good ol' American Justice! The home of (almost) every great vigilante bent on righting the wrongs society lets slip through the cracks, America has had a long history of unflappable lawyers defying mafia bosses! Whistleblowers bringing down big corporations! The common man sitting wherever on whatever bus she damn well pleases.

Check this out. Or, better yet, balance it out. The government abruptly ended its inquiry into a warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the necessary security clearance.

That's pretty damn tragic. I'm adding it to my long long long list of outrages against this administration, political turncoatery, and the inadherence to the same group of principles we use as justification to declare war on other nations. Recently there have been many criticisms of Russia's step back from Democracy. If that's a step back, then this is a giant leap, a cataclysmic-pounce-in-reverse. Oversight committees are there for oversight. No man or woman or agency made up of them is beyond the law. That includes those that make the law.

If they are that worried about necessary security clearance, then how do they have humans working for them in the first place? I had to sign an NDA for my new job. I had to sign it as an intern. Just slap one of them puppies down on the Justice Dept. desk and have at it. Unless you have something to hide. Or you are made up entirely of robots. Maybe killer robots who drink gas and eat innocent children.

Gnarly Dudes

Just go out and buy it, however you can legally get it.

Gnarls Barkley - "St. Elsewhere".

I said get up and go and freakin buy it!

You've got to love it when two talented individuals come together and collaborate on something and that something turns out to be wonderful. Exceeding your expectations. For those unfamiliar: Danger Mouse (on the left) gained international notoriety for mixing Jay-Z's Black Album over the Beatles' White Album and shooting it out over the internet as the Grey Album. Cee-Lo (the short fella on the right) grew up in the Atlanta rap scene alongside Outcast and the Dungeon Family.

Plus, can you go wrong with a guy who looks like David Blaine and a dude who has one of the strangest southern accents you've ever heard both dressed up in an homage to A Clockwork Orange for a promo shoot?!

Like totally karmic

Few things have disappointed me on a cosmic scale as much as last week when I got some takeout Chinese food and was denied my AMERICAN RIGHT to read my fortune upon cracking the eery pseudough of my after-dinner treat. My cries of outrage must've reached the heavens...for just now I reached to my prepackaged dessert to find two cookies packaged where one had been each time before. I named my two new friends Chang and Eng, for they had lived so long, so close together in in a plastic prison that must've tested the dexterity of the machine that sealed it and the social graces of the two cookies inside.

And much to my happiness, there were fortunes in each of them. For each fortune I read, I don't add "in bed" to the end like most people do. Instead, I try to imagine who wrote each cookie and why.

Fortune 1 (I ate the surrounding pseudough)
Penned by a descendent of Dr. Frankenstein named Teddy Franks (geneology was tough to prove considering the Americanization of the name once his grandfather arrived at Ellis Island in 1911), this bit of invaluable and enigmatic advice acts as both a family motto and as a call to arms for his new branch of research involving the Asian concept of chi and the time-honored pursuit of immortality.
"Try to channel excess energies into rejuvenation."

Fortune 2 (One folded morsel of pseudough is enough)
Lovingly crafted in a dark apartment strewn with pizza boxes, the glare of a computer with a greasy mouse and a crumb-caked keyboard by Harry Holcomb. Bereft of real friends thanks to staggering social behaviours he cares not to change but exhibits freely on various less-than-wholesome websites on a pay-by-basis, he has compartmentalized his bits of conversation into several easy-to-understand English phrases that are designed not to wow, but convey his "interest" in people. No thanks Harry, I'm not buying what you're selling. It's going to take more than a vacuous compliment to rattle my cage!
"You are talented in many ways."

Tracing back the branches

Will Hindmarch, Vampire: The Requiem developer, renaissance man, and irrefutable fuddy-duddy, forwarded an article around to the office a week or two ago. I just got around to reading it this morning as I was waiting for my check engine light to be checked (everything's A-OK).

LARPing, a phenomenon in Scandinavia? Even I don't go THIS far!

It's an interesting trip through the prehistory of my job. For anyone who could in any way, shape, or form be considered to have a nerdish streak, this article will fascinate you. For those who yearn to understand their nerdish spouses, partners, or relatives, it might help you unlock their inner secrets.
Without further ado, here is the article.

Uncle Walt

Disney is great and all. Some people even have an unfortunate obsession with it. Yet I speak not of the man subject to much conspiratorial speculation. He's the salt of the earth. American Poet. Introducing Walt Whitman. I heard this poem on NPR. Me like the words. Me repost them here.

Reconciliation

Word over all, beautiful as the sky,

Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost,

That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this solid world;

For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,

I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin--I draw near,

Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.