Fools

Only a little over a month until April Fools Day.
Shop early.

http://www.zymetrical.com/practicaljokes.asp

Scatalogical humor seems to prevail here.

Silly, Childish, Sick.
YEP!

Korn Guitarist Finds God

Oy, well to each his own.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=
topNews&storyID=7706585

Maybe he needs one of these
http://www.yo-god.com/default.htm
Or maybe he has one.

Course I really don't care - Just because he's a B'field boy.
I'm no fan - remake Another Brick in the Wall.

Why?
"You're not Pink Floyd" (by the way, which one is Pink?)

Hunter S. Thompson

"I hate to advocate weird chemicals, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone … but they've always worked for me."

Certainly one of the most influential authors in my life. In the 70s I devoured Rolling Stone not for the music news but for the politics and social commentary, and nothing was better but when RS arrived in the mail and there was an article by HST. Here was a guy that embraced a wild and independent life but wasn't some bleeding heart. Guns were fun, not some evil invention of men (okay, maybe they were, but so much the better). Government, authority and most institutions were the real devices of evil. People were the problem and he relished in observing and participating with them at their worst, writing, entertaining and taking his readers along for the long strange trip.



13:00
I've read several articles on HST this morning. No clue as to why he killed himself.
But some of the best tributes......

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/news/story?id=1996230

http://gonzo.org/

http://www.livejournal.com/users/docgonzo19/3127.html

19:00
from the San Jose Mercury News
article........

As Paul Perry, one of his biographers put it: "He rides the edge at high speed while engaging in a mix of raucous verbal and gestural antics: hoax, legerdemain, gargantuan exaggeration, buffoonery, conscious alteration, threat, insult. ... He gets people hooked on him because he's fun, irresistible, liberating, infectious."

But once the fun was over, Thompson often made clear, he wasn't going to stick around and watch the janitors sweep up.

In George Plimpton's "Shadow Box," he imagines meeting death in a flaming car crash. In the introduction to his collected works in 1978, he jokes about leaping from a 28th-floor office window.

In a BBC documentary included with the "collector's edition" of the "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" DVD, he discusses plans for a giant monument on the back 40 of his ranch in Woody Creek, Colo. A hundred feet tall, it would include a cannon to fire a canister containing his ashes out over the valley.

All to the tune of Bob Dylan's "Mister Tambourine Man."

snip........

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews
/entertainment/gossip/10955900.htm?1c

From the same article one I'd not remembered but now recall how great it was
article.......

Perhaps his last truly great piece of writing ran in Rolling Stone's 10th-anniversary issue in 1977. Titled "The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat," it was a tribute to Oscar Acosta, "the Brown Buffalo," whose life had unraveled after the Vegas adventure with Thompson.

Rather than the "old, sick and very troubled man" he saw in the latter-day Hemingway, many will remember Thompson with the epitaph he bestowed on Acosta: "Too weird to live, too rare to die."

And always, dancing beneath the diamond sky, with one hand waving free.

snip........

What else could anyone say?

Ya Think He Has a Problem?

article........
Actor Tom Sizemore has been jailed for violating his probation by failing a drug test after he was caught trying to use a prosthetic penis to fake the results, a Los Angeles County prosecutor said on Friday.
snip........

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=
/nm/20050211/people_nm/crime_sizemore_dc

The IG EULA & TOS

1. By reading this end user license agreement (EULA) the reader agrees to all terms set forth by the Indigenous Geek (IG).
2 User shall allow IG to monitor their computer (especially your porn collection).
3. User shall reveal all passwords, user names and credit card information to IG.
4. If you have a web-cam it shall be turned on and aimed at the bed before having sex (men having solo sex exempt) and set to brodcast to the IG servers.
5. Failure to abide by this terms of service (TOS) shall result in user send IG the sum of "One Million Dollars".

Dosen't seem worse than anyothers I've read lately.
http://eff.org/wp/eula.php

George Carlin

I received one of those sappy e-mails from a friend that pretends to be from George Carlin.
Titled A Wonderful Message Fron George Carlin - A Paradox of Our Time.
Arghhhhhh.........
It's not his and I'll rain on everybody's feel good parade just this once (HA!).
I wish people would stop passing those. First if you are any fan of GC you know right off they aren't his. Second they insult a guy who while being a comedian is one of the best social commentators of the last 50 years. Of course GC really doesn't give a shit about most things, but he does about his writing.......

DON'T BLAME ME
Floating around the Internet these days, posted and e-mailed back and forth, are a number of writings attributed to me, and I want people to know they're not mine. Don't blame me.

Some are essay-length, some are just short lists of one and two-line jokes, but if they're flyin' around the Internet, they're probably not mine. Occasionally, a couple of jokes on a long list might have come from me, but not often. And because most of this stuff is really lame, it's embarrassing to see my name on it.

snip....
http://www.georgecarlin.com/home/dontblame.html

and here's a very good one on Snopes about it and why it keeps getting passed around

We like pieces such as "The Paradox of Our Time" because they summarize all the problems of modern society into a neat laundry list of "What Has Gone Wrong" while presenting possible solutions by way of juxtaposition. The pairing of "We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values," for example, implies that increased affluence is responsible for a decline in morality and carries the underlying implication that if we turn our backs on the almighty dollar, our kids will no longer murder one another.

Clear-cut cause-and-effect pairings provide far more comfort than does accepting the harsh reality that we live in a world of no assurances at all, a world where bad things can happen at any moment, to anyone, for no discernable (and thus no preventable) reason. Our ancestors coped with that feeling of powerlessness by inventing myths about petty, lust-filled, vengeful gods who, even if they were capricious in their actions and insensible to the human misery their warring caused, were at least tangible entities who could be identified as the cause of otherwise unfathomable catastrophes. Our sophistication has loosed us from our belief in those myths, leaving us vulnerable to a sense of a world careening out of control.

snip...........
http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/paradox.asp

BTW the real author of The Paradox of Our Time is known. A little bit about him from the Snopes piece

Those intent upon taking inspiration from "Paradox" should consider the following: during Bob Moorehead's tenure as pastor of Overlake Christian Church, seventeen members of his congregation reported that he had sexually assaulted them. These allegations, which surfaced in 1997, prompted his resignation in 1998. After a year of publicly supporting Moorehead the church elders withdrew their support, their own investigation into the charges having led them to conclude their pastor had indeed been guilty of molesting a number of male churchgoers.
snip..........

Hmmm....... paradox indeed.

More Food Thoughts & HB to My Daughter

Well my daughter turns 14 today. Damn I'm getting old.

So last hight we went to Woolgrowers for dinner. The food was as good as always, with the exception of the french fries. They were busy as usual for a Saturday night with a large group of high school kids in formals right behind us. As much as I've always loved WG the experience is not the same. They want to ding you for everything, including the garlic. Blue cheese, cottage cheese, even dessert is now extra. It's often too crowded and too rushed. It's just not as good as it once was. Of course I remember going when it was still the little cafe on Sumner St under the Metropole Hotel. and the complete dinner was $2. And about the fries, when they get too busy I think they push them too fast. The last couple of times they've been greasey and soggy, not proper Basque style at all. Maybe I'm just getting cranky in my old age.

Pyrenees while having changed hands again is doing a better job and recently I've been to Benjis and been duely impressed. Noriega's is still the best for the one meal, one serving a night but alas I can't get the rest of the crew to go for that.

Family and friends at home tonight for chicken curry per the princess's request. No complaints from dad on that one, one of my favorites too.

Lent & Fast Food

I mentioned in the previous post not liking McD very much. I try to avoid those places whenever I can. Most people with any taste are forced into those corporate ratholes by their kids. Mine seems to prefer TB and BK over McD anyway, I don't see a difference.

Usually some locally owned fast food place is always preferrable to those joints (In'n'Out exculded).
If you're around B'Field it's Andre's on Brundage (recently sold by the Andre family after 50 years but so far so good). Or maybe JollyKone on 34th (great burger special with tons of fries w/season salt, yummmm). Or John's Burgers (Oak, River Blvd and F St.) your typical oversized greek/burger fast food. Get the Gyro - excelllent! Zorba's out on N. Chester in Oildale is just as good.

Okay none of it's good for you, but don't lie, we all eat it.

So, the wife & daughter have given up fast food for lent. I'm giving up all Albanian dark beer.
Oh wait, I'm not even catholic.

SB Ads & Marketing

Couple of good controversies have sprung up over the Super Bowl ads. (That is why you watch, isn't it?)
First GoDaddy's wardrobe malfunction. I thought it was great fun. NFL & Fox apparently didn't as they pulled the second running of the ad.

You can read all about it, watch the ad or even a 2 min extended version, and get Bob Parsons', the founder and president of GoDaddy, comments on it all.

http://www.bobparsons.com/

article.........

Take a close look at the commercial.
If you watch our commercial closely you will notice that what you see is no worse than what you might see while walking down the street on most summer days. For example:

1. Candice (the actress who performs in the commercial) is completely clothed. It’s true that she’s wearing a tank top. No part of Candice’s breasts are showing and it’s difficult to see any cleavage.
2. There were no close-ups of Candice that bared anything.
3. Candice made no suggestive moves during the commercial.
4. Candice said nothing during the commercial that was suggestive.
5. Anyone who takes a trip to the mall will see far more skin bared than what is seen in our commercial.
6. When one of Candice's spaghetti straps pop at the beginning the commercial, she catches it instantly and *nothing* is bared as a result.
7. Close-ups of the Philadelphia cheerleaders, right at the end of the 1st quarter, bared far more and were far more suggestive than anything that took place in our commercial.
8. There is nothing in our commercial inappropriate for a child to see.

What we are guilty of?
Here’s what we’re guilty of:

1. We selected a very attractive, well-endowed, 26 year old woman for our commercial.
2. We indirectly (by having her right spaghetti strap snap at the beginning of the commercial) referred to the Janet Jackson episode.
3. Our commercial was a parody of the censorship we are seeing today, and that’s something that certain people do not want in the public light.

snip........

By the way, I'm a big fan of GoDaddy and use them for all my domain registration and hosting.
GoDaddy.com

The second one is IMHO even more ridiculous. McDonald's Lincoln French Fry. Good parody of the Virgin Mary Cheese Sandwich. The problem is some people took offense of some of the tie in tactics McDonalds used. A website, a real auction and a blog.
The website is mildly funny. The auction raises monies for Ronald McDonald house, a children's charity! Can that be wrong?
The bloggers were mad because the blog seemed almost to be authentic. Hey far too many bloggers have lost it. You aren't that important. They've started thinking of themselves as the people's source of real news. Promote Howard Dean, bring down Dan Rather. Oh stop it. I blog and I read a lot of blogs. Take each for what it is and nothing more.
Like all things, blogs can be used and misused, Caveat Emptor.
If someone uses a blog to sell fast food so what?
Don't like it. Don't eat there (but hey, I usually don't, but the fries are by far the best thing they offer).

http://lincolnfry.yahoo.com/

http://lincolnfry.typepad.com/blog/

Objective Journalism

I have no idea if you read Fred Reed's Fred on Everything. Usually very funny but with a point. This week he takes a serious look at bias in news. I've never read a more right-on article. Truely worth the time to read it. Good insight on reporting (well after all he is one) and a reminder that war is hell. No matter how right our political leaders try to play up the wonderful things we do (and I believe we try) awful things happen in wars, often to the innocent. Bring democracy to Iraq - doesn't mean much to a dead Iraqi - even less to the family of a dead US soldier.

article......

Again, suppose that you are trying very hard to be objective, whatever you think that means. How do you do it? Reporting of necessity requires that a reporter make choices. Any choice constitutes a slant.

Do you write pleasant home-towners—boyish young Marine relaxing in the compound and remembering his high-school sweetheart waiting in Roanoke? Do you focus on the alert courage of our young men as they patrol the mean streets, etc? On the sniper who says he likes to shoot a man in the stomach so that his screams will demoralize the enemy, before maybe finishing him off? On the Marine with his eyes and half his face gone because of a roadside bomb? The twenty-seven Iraqis killed by a car bomb downtown? Beheadings? Where do you put your emphasis?

Usually journalists turn against wars. Why? Consult the foregoing paragraph. It is not because they are Commies. It is because they are there. After a few weeks on the ground, you will find yourself acquiring pronounced opinions about things. This is inevitable. No one short of a diagnosable psychopath remains emotionally remote.

snip......

http://fredoneverything.net/ObjectiveNews.shtml

You Get the Government You Deserve

Unbelieveable! That's all I can say.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=676&u=
/usatoday/20050131/ts_usatoday
/usstudentssaypressfreedomsgotoofar&printer=1

U.S. students say press freedoms go too far

Mon Jan 31, 7:20 AM ET

By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY

One in three U.S. high school students say the press ought to be more restricted, and even more say the government should approve newspaper stories before readers see them, according to a survey being released today.

The survey of 112,003 students finds that 36% believe newspapers should get "government approval" of stories before publishing; 51% say they should be able to publish freely; 13% have no opinion.

Asked whether the press enjoys "too much freedom," not enough or about the right amount, 32% say "too much," and 37% say it has the right amount. Ten percent say it has too little.