Manual Override

Who Will Think of the Automakers?!?

2008-11-20T18:33:00.003-06:00

I'd like to see a speed round of Pelosi, Reid, Frank, et al., analyzing an income statement, balance sheet, and statement of cash flows from each of the big three automakers begging for money. Heck, I'll make it even easier. Remove the titles from the statements and see if they can even identify which is which!

Even if they could pass my little test, why should we expect them to be able to analyze business plans from the automakers? Are they investment bankers all of a sudden?

MN Senate race: Why is Franken challenging this ballot? This stinks of desperation.

Freddie and Fannie's magnanimity astounds us! They're suspending foreclosures through January 9th. A reminder that whatever the government can give you it can take away.

With Apologies

2008-11-19T20:17:00.002-06:00

Somebody said a Bad Word! State firefighters union chief resigns over remark.

Let's see, I'm guessing Gale used the dreaded, fearsome, death-inducing N-word. The word so bad we can't say it, or print it, even when we're talking about it, and, in some circles, even saying "the N-word" is looked down upon. All this silliness over six little letters. How would I be able to talk about Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word by Randall Kennedy without typing the dreaded N-word?

D'oh! I tricked myself into that.

Anyways, so Gale drops the N-bomb in a private conversation with people he's freely choosing to associate with. Not in the workplace. Not speaking officially as the head of the Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin. I don't see why he felt the need to resign his job, and bunch of other positions he held:

Gale, a lieutenant with the West Allis Fire Department, also resigned from all public and government boards he served on, according to his resignation letter, which was included in a union statement announcing the resignation
....
"The word has no business in my vocabulary and I should not have used it - not even in private," Gale said.

I don't think he owes anyone an apology. It may have been a crude, tasteless statement, maybe even degrading or offensive, but he has a right to express himself. Read the story, and take note of the condescension and self-righteousness of the people commenting on the incident. These are the same people who would claim that William Ayers has a right to dedicate his books to Sirhan Sirhan and call for the overthrow of the U.S. government. And that's where they'd stop, because criticizing liberal ideas or even speaking about them in a context where you might theoretically question their worth is verboten.

Next up in PC silliness, a bunch of kids said a Bad Thing, a mayor feels the need to apologize: Mayor sorry for kids' 'Assassinate Obama' chant.

I wouldn't apologize for something someone else said, though I might point out that there are specific, important exceptions to the freedom of speech.

Maybe the mayor of...wherever Gale lives...should apologize. Then the county executive(s), then board, city council, governor, his Congressperson, Sens. Feingold and Kohl (where is he, by the way?).

And, finally, President-Elect Obama should apologize to himself for the nasty thing Gale said.

Auto Industry Bailout; Piracy

2008-11-18T19:07:00.004-06:00

I'm not in favor of the federal government giving or lending money to G.M., Ford, or Chrysler. I'd try to list all the reasons why, but Michael E. Levine at the Wall Street Journal does a better job in his article here.

If the federal government does provide the automakers with money then I'd like the contracts with the UAW to be modified. Unilaterally. If I have to suffer as an investor in banks that are having their mortgage terms modified, why not apply that principle in the other direction? Mortgage payments too high? Cut them so the poor homeowner can afford them. Labor costs too high? Cut them so the poor employer can afford them!

I'd expect UAW employees and pro-union types to object to their contracts being modified. I'd be upset if I had to accept a salary reduction again (I had to right after 9/11) but it's a lot better than no salary. If the UAW doesn't agree to wage reductions then the automakers will go out of business and it'll be next to impossible for the laid off workers to get jobs at other auto factories. Why? Potential employers will avoid hiring laid off UAW workers to sidestep the risk of introducing people who are likely to organize the workplace. I don't know if this is discriminatory, but it's something I'd do if I had the opportunity and it was legal.

Accept a pay cut and keep your job, or pull up stakes, move down South, and hope to get a job at half your old salary. I'd pick the first option.

Some proponents of the bailout think consumers are less likely to buy from bankrupt automakers. I don't subscribe to this notion. Many of the airlines in the U.S. are continually in and out of bankruptcy, but we don't stop using them. It isn't like G.M. going under is suddenly going to dry up the pool of replacement parts being made for their cars or lead every mechanic to beat his or her tools into plowshares.

In other news, send in the commandos! We need live video feeds of the special forces storming the hijacked ships and taking the fight to the Somali camps from which the bandits operate. This would be an awesome reality show! I'd watch it, or DVR it.

Finally, some pirates aren't as bright as the rest. Another Somali group recently hijacked 30,000 tons of grain. I think fencing the oil is going to be a lot easier than fencing the grain. I'd take it to North Korea - about the only place in the world that can use grain but can't use oil.

Odds and Ends

2008-11-17T21:30:00.006-06:00

We grow 'em creepy here in Wisconsin, but we don't always grow 'em smart. From Mauston, 70-ish miles NNW of Madison, comes this item:

A woman [Tammy Lewis] accused of helping her religious leader hide a decaying corpse on her toilet so they could continue collecting her Social Security was convicted of a misdemeanor in a deal for her to testify against the leader, a prosecutor said Monday.

Ok...religious cult, leaving a body on the john for a while...I can see where this could happen to someone. I'm extra lazy, after all, there are others still lazier than I.

The woman was a member of the Order of the Divine Will. Not the catchiest name for a religious sect. Nothing doomy about it, no death or damnation or apocalyptica. Anyways, they got Lewis to roll and testify against her religious leader.

She also told authorities she was Middlesworth's power of attorney, and the older woman used all of her money to support their six-member religious group.

What? Six members? That isn't a religious group, that's a card group. That's a road trip. A shared cab, an elevator ride, a Starbucks line...not a religious group. I could get six nutcases to swear their undying loyalty to the Invisible Jellyfish in under a week if I really tried. Six people? Sad.

Bushey told Lewis that God would revive Middlesworth, who friends and family said was from Washington state, investigators said.

Here I'd play the culture card. Many legitimate religions believe in reincarnation, and there are plenty of Biblical stories about people coming back from the dead. Well, at least two that I know of.

Lewis' son told detectives Bushey told him demons were destroying Middlesworth's appearance as she decayed in the bathroom to make it look like she wouldn't rise from the dead, the criminal complaint said.

I'd draw the line at keeping a corpse in the house if there were kids there. If all the adults didn't mind the corpse, who am I to say it has to go? But kids, that's just asking for trouble. Back when I lived with He Who Is Named Rik, I might have left a corpse on the john for a night or two, just as a goof.

The total take for this crime: I'm guessing between 12 and 15 grand. Maybe that's a jackpot in central Wisconsin...I don't know.

Speaking of jackpots...let's say you've got a boat full of gold, worth about $120 million. You have to send it halfway across the world on an ocean-going vessel. How many people would you have crewing the ship? If you said 25, you're a target for pirates, like the recently hijacked Sirius Star, an oil tanker owned by Saudi Aramco. Yep, 2 million barrels of oil on a ship over 1,000 feet long and over 63 yards wide. Twenty-five people?

The ship operators and crew obviously haven't played much Rainbow Six. My crew of three or four guys can drop 30 hostiles in under five minutes, and all without making a sound. Damn.

Global Warming Theory: Fun With Numbers

2008-11-16T16:07:00.003-06:00

Dr. James Hansen, Al Gore's buddy and they guy running the show at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), said October 2008 was THE HOTTEST ON RECORD!

Only it wasn't. Temperature readings for Russia in October were the same as September and August. I'm No Expert[TM], but I'm pretty sure it's hotter in Russia in August than it is in October (or did Putin change that, too?) I wouldn't be writing about this if it were the IPCC releasing the data. I don't expect them to share with the public anything that doesn't conform to their catastrophic anthropogenic theory of global warming. But NASA on the other hand...I kind of expect them to get things right.

NASA's explanation...well, we outsourced the collection of that particular data so, it's not our fault. Once the correct temperature readings were fed into the model the results showed that October was still the hottest on record. Hmm. Seems they discovered a new Arctic hot spot they'd neglected to include in the first run. Funny. This is explained in a Telegraph (UK) article:

A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with. This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen's institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.

If there is one scientist more responsible than any other for the alarm over global warming it is Dr Hansen, who set the whole scare in train back in 1988 with his testimony to a US Senate committee chaired by Al Gore. Again and again, Dr Hansen has been to the fore in making extreme claims over the dangers of climate change.
Yet last week's latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen's methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.

Thankfully there are people who care enough about this issue to pore over the data being used to validate the global warming theory and notify us of inaccuracies. I'm not saying the IPCC, GISS, and folks like them are knowingly misrepresenting the facts, but they may be bending the truth a little. They're the ones writing the Truth algorithm - the statistical models used to interpret the data - and they have no shortage of ethical conflicts here. So I'm glad groups of people smarter than me are taking the time to keep the global warming theory proponents honest. Watts Up With That? and Climate Audit are two such groups. Check out the Climate Audit posts - some of the letters from the global warming theory supporters in response to requests for information are quite nasty.

Who Moved My Wallet?

2008-11-15T14:22:00.004-06:00

My mind has been on my money as of late, and likewise, recently, my money has been on my mind. I cracked open the Scrooge McDuck Vault 2.0 this morning and counted my pennies.

I've lost the equivalent of one years' worth of after-tax salary in the past three months! Oh well. About a third of my non-home equity worth is in guaranteed return funds right now. I have two 401(k)s from previous employers where I just never bothered to transfer the money elsewhere, and upon leaving each company I parked the money in the 3% to 5% guaranteed return funds. Sometimes sloth pays off. If I'd put the money in my regular mutual funds I'd be out a lot more money.

I can't get too worked up about the paper losses I'm taking because my wife and I have 45 or 50 working years left between us to save and invest for retirement. If we continue to max out the 401(k) contributions each year that's at least $725,000. I continue to invest in mutual funds because prices haven't been this low in years, and the historical return averages out to about 7% in the long term.

At least my state isn't on fire.

And hey, gas is cheap again! Take note of all the green energy projects being delayed or cancelled - the only long-term economical, non-polluting choice when oil is below $50 or so a barrel is nuclear power. Even the Saudis are building nuclear power plants, and they're sitting on oil that costs maybe $5 or $10 a barrel to extract and sell. We should build nuclear power plants in America! I'd even let one be built in my backyard.

The New FDR!

2008-11-13T22:28:00.003-06:00

EBay removes offers of inauguration tickets

This is a good move. The tickets haven't even been distributed yet, so how can people be offering them? When they have been released, though, I predict that some Web sites that buy and sell tickets will have them for sale. Any attempt by Sen. Feinstein and others to make a special law to ban sale or transfer of the tickets will just make the Obama transition look even sillier and more elitist. If that's possible.

Here is some more Obama idolatry for you - Time magazine has declared Obama the New FDR. For heaven's sake, he hasn't done anything yet! And if I remember correctly, FDR let the economy slide deeper and deeper into trouble in his days between winning the election and being sworn in. One explanation as to why is so that whatever successes he had would by that much more impressive once he turned the economy around. If the president-elect has some amazing ideas then I'd like to see them NOW rather than later! Two months from now we could be out another one million jobs...why not share the grand plan with us right now and save a million working families the grief?

Speaking of stunning strategic plans, I'm still waiting to hear Sen. Kerry's plan to win the Iraq war that he dangled in front of us in 2004. That and a full disclosure of his medical records, so the world could finally see him as a carping, preening, vain young man who had the presence of mind to shoot film footage of his time in Vietnam (er, rather, 50 miles off shore) for later political use. His own men mocked him and made fun of him for returning from a mission with a combat wound - a piece of something not much bigger than a grain of rice that barely penetrated the skin of his arm. He had to cup his hand around it on the return boat trip so it wouldn't fall out, all so he could earn a purple medal. That's a fucking piker if ever I've seen one, and that's the kind of asshole leader who gets good men killed. Or gets killed by his own men. Thank God we passed him over.

More Obama love, this time from Linda Tripp:

... I believe President-elect Obama possesses an instantly recognizable purity of soul that, coupled with his brilliance, and, of course, his eloquence, brought quite unimaginable and long-awaited magic to the country, transforming red and blue states, quite literally, into ‘The Color Purple.’ I believe the entire country will stand behind him.

Does she think before she speaks? Seriously? Though I have to give her credit for the segue into the Color Purple reference. Very Dennis Miller-esque.

An instantly recognizable purity of soul? Her batteries must have been low back in the Lewinsky and Clinton days, because any good judge of character would have made a huge detour to avoid those two. At least she didn't refer to his as America's first colored president. But first, a number...You know, a musical number!

After work tonight I got dinner with a dozen or so of my co-workers and their spouses. Their political leanings go from centrist to Marxist, most are very liberal. One gentleman is an elected official serving on the Dane county board. I had fun riling them up. They had fun taking potshots at Palin. The difference was that I was asking serious policy questions about Obama's administration and his plans to fix the enonomy. They were just insulting Gov. Palin as a witless human being who gets pregnant a lot, denigrating all Alaskans as inbred hicks, and insisting that Republicans are to be pitied and mocked.

I really expected them to be more civil. It was like they're still high on the win and haven't come back to Earth to face the long list of hard work ahead of us. And not a single one of them could tell me anything specific about what Obama plans to do and how he's going to fix our ailing economy. Just that....he'll do it, don't worry, he has a plan!

Blind faith in politicians scares me. And religion and politics shouldn't always mix, like this story. I mean, c'mon, we don't need this kind of divisive crap in our country.

My Pledge for the Next Four Years

2008-11-12T21:44:00.004-06:00

I hereby promise to abstain from acts of piracy on the high seas for the next four years.

There, I said it. I hope you're happy, because piracy looks like a nice career choice next to the doom and gloom I foresee until Americans come to their senses and deny the Democratic party control of either the House, Senate, or the presidency. I don't know when it'll happen - two, four, or six years - but we'll have a chance to vote again soon enough.

When we next vote as a nation in 2010 I think it'll be a referendum on how well the Democratic-controlled legislative and executive branches have handled the economic crisis we're in right now. If the federal government decides to take on more responsibility for running the economy and making decisions for us then they'd better do a stellar job or there will be a hell of a backlash. I don't see the sense in the federal government running insurance, banking, and/or auto companies, and I don't think most Americans do either. Providing a safety net - like the FDIC or PBGC - is something that only a government can do. Running an automaker and underwriting insurance policies should be left to people used to operating organizations with the goal of making a profit.

Just so we're all on the same page here - we've elected to the highest office in the land a one-term senator who has never, as far as I know, had to manage a sizeable number of employees, prepare multi-year budgets, or hire and fire people who make things with their hands for a living. (I'm not including Obama's time spent on non-profit boards because you really have nothing to lose when you're playing with money from dead rich people.) Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin were far from ideal candidates for the top two spots in the executive, but I still think they're both a hell of a lot more qualified that Senators Obama or Biden.

I'm trying to give the president-elect the benefit of the doubt. It's nice to have hope and a positive message, but I can't shake the feeling that he's still in wide-eyed dreamer mode. If I were him I'd be freaking out and wondering what I'd gotten myself into. The worst national and global economy in three generations, looming terrorist threats, two active wars, a massive national debt, newly emboldened Russian nationalists, Iranian Holocaust-deniers hell bent on acquiring nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles, and Congressional job approval ratings in the low 30s. That's not my idea of fun.

The times we're rushing headlong into may require a Churchill in terms of focus, decisiveness, the capacity for strategic thinking, and sheer tenacity. I feel like we're getting the love-in version of John Lennon*, telling us to all get along, and asking us to imagine a better world.

Fine, I can imagine a better world. But can the Democrats build one? I try to make the world a better place because I believe that we each have the power to create the world we live in. Create a universe of positive thinking, as Deepak Chopra might suggest, where there is no anger because there is nothing to be angry about – this is a grand idea. I wish everyone in the world had the courage and capacity for compassion exhibited by the Buddha, Jesus Christ, Gandhi, and the better Popes. But unless Obama has a Level XV MEST up his sleeve there is a lot of work to be done. You can't run a nation by putting a big Successories poster in the Oval office!

Bottom line, I don't think Obama has the right stuff. For the sake of us all, I hope he proves me wrong.

* There are 64,646,873 Yoko Onos in America. Can you find them?

McCain-Obama

2008-01-09T17:16:00.000-06:00

Yep. McCain/Obama 2008. That's the dream ticket.

Now, about the NH primary last night...Jesus H Motherfucking Chirst on William Shatner's invisible nuclear unicycle...CRYING IS NOT A VIABLE LONG-TERM LEADERSHIP STYLE!!! So the Arkansas devil-robot managed a few tears...a bold move, seeing as it used up her entire moisture supply for the next six years...is this something we want in a leader?

When North Korea and Iran threaten us with nuclear attack, is she going to throw a tantrum? Is she going to lose her shit Nagin-style when Al-Qaeda in America rams a gasoline tanker into the Corn Palace? GOD!!!

I'm not saying the whole event was planned - she'd never do anything like that! - but I'm pretty sure it wasn't a spur-of-the-moment thing for HRC. She was smart enough to see the opening and spout a few tears. I must relocate now, lest she gaze her lidless eye upon me...the Rose Law Firm billing records were never fully accounted for, you see...

Personal Monitoring

2007-12-30T13:28:00.000-06:00

A prediction: A movement will arise wherein people willingly monitor their own behavior while in public places and use the audiovisual recordings to make sure their civil liberties are not trampled upon by persons in positions of power. I call this Personal Monitoring. Videos of police misusing their authority will be commonplace on sites like YouTube. The days of your word versus the officer’s word will end. Some police officers and unions will oppose the movement at first, but the smart ones will realize that this is an efficient way to identify and remove the very people who give their profession a bad name.

There is anecdotal evidence of this already happening, though mostly by chance, not design. Someone thinks to press record on an MP3 player when questioned by an officer and catches the officer threatening to perjure himself in order to hurt the individual, or onlookers record officers beating someone who has already been restrained, etc. The evidence isn’t always convincing, and sometimes the officers get off without punishment, but I think we’ll reach a tipping point as a) society becomes more comfortable with being recorded in public places (look at the UK!), b) audio and visual resolution and quality improve, and c) consumer appliances for Personal Monitoring hit the market and/or are incorporated into vehicles by automakers as an additional safety feature. It’d be nice to have the bandwidth and battery power to constantly transmit data from a Personal Monitoring device to a networked storage device to prevent recordings from being destroyed by ne’er-do-wells, but we’ll get there someday.

If I weren’t so lazy and content with my life I’d pursue the creation of Personal Monitoring devices, start Web sites designed to host videos of bad cops, even work on the integration of Personal Monitoring equipment in automobiles. Hmm, how about an OnStar-like service to conference in legal representation during traffic stops?

Just my two cents.

Off The Wagon

2007-12-29T00:55:00.000-06:00

I haven't posted anything in a whole year!?

I'm pissed off about the Bhutto assassination. It just sucks from every angle. Hillary will play it to her advantage, which leads one to think…maybe she was in on it. Hmm.

In other news, I've fallen off the wagon. Not drinking, or crack, but World of Warcraft. These long winter nights all cooped up with no classes to study for has made me a little stir crazy. So I'll go back to being an alchemical Druid herbalist for a while.

History's Unmarked Grave of Legal Appeals

2006-12-29T22:50:00.000-06:00

How ironic that Saddam tried to use the US legal system to stay his execution.

As his execution drew near, Saddam's lawyers filed an appeal trying to stave it off. However, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who heard arguments from attorneys by phone, rejected the challenge Friday night. She said U.S. courts do not have jurisdiction to interfere in another country's judicial process.

In a 21-page request filed Friday, Saddam's attorneys argued that because Saddam also faces a civil lawsuit in Washington, he has rights as a civil defendant that would be violated if he is executed. He has not received notice of those rights and the consequences that the lawsuit would have on his estate, his attorneys said.

Three cheers for Judge Kollar-Kotelly and her long-distance justice, and a toast to Saddam burning in the eternal fires of Hell.

Stupid Newspaper Tricks

2006-12-22T10:11:00.000-06:00

New York City Birth Rate Plunges

There were 122,725 births in NYC in 2005, a decrease of 1,374 from the previous year. That's a whopping 1.1%. Hardly a plunge. Are stock markets said to plunge when they shed 1.1% of their value? I think not.

The article goes on to explain the reason for the decline. Yes, it mirrors the national trend of families having fewer children, and maybe this has something to do with the shocking 1.1% birth rate decline.

Then the article drops this bombshell:

The health department is also attributing the drop to the dramatic decline
in the number of girls younger than age 20 having babies.

What? Fewer women having babies is linked to fewer babies being born? Wow, make way for the Pulitzer, because I can't remember the last time I read such a hard-hitting piece of investigative journalism. How did this one sneak past Woodward? I don't want to sound like a disbeliever, but I hope Jill Gardiner is ready to name her sources and release her statistical data and models to the academic community, because an idea this radical bears a proper vetting. Could there be a strong positive correlation between fewer women having babies and fewer babies being born?!

The article ends with two depressing statistics: 52% of the births were paid for by Medicaid, and 44% were to single mothers. No word on how many babies were born to single fathers.

90% Chance of Lawsuits

2006-12-14T16:37:00.000-06:00

Senator Tim Johnson (D-SD) isn't well. The doctors says his "brain" is "bleeding," whatever that means.

And guess who suddenly got religion? Every Democrat in Washington, D.C., because if Johnson dies or is incapable of carrying out his duties the Republican governor of SD gets to appoint a replacement. If a Republican is appointed then the Senate is tied 50-50, and VP Cheney gets the tie-breaking vote.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who is to become majority leader when the new
Senate convenes on Jan. 4, said, "We're all praying for a full recovery. We're
confident that will be the case."

I'm not confident that'll be the case. I hope he makes a full recovery, but what I am sure of is that hundreds of DNC lawyers are staying up nights researching and writing briefs that will allow Johnson to remain in office no matter what happens to him, short of death. And if he enters a persistent vegatative state, guess who'll suddenly be all pro-life and filing lawsuits to keep the plug in the wall?

I predict many lawsuits if the Senator doesn't make a quick recovery. Mark my words.

Wherever Hillary is, I'm sure she's reading the entrails of a black goat for clues on how to append her deal with el Diablo.

Password Tips

2006-12-13T13:09:00.000-06:00

Class president accused of altering grades.

Cooper City High's bookkeeper told investigators that in the week before the grades were changed she witnessed Shrouder in the office of the computer technology specialist looking for a "sign-on" password to the district network. The technology specialist had left his passwords on a notepad in his desk, according to the report.

Tip #1: Don't write down your password on a notepad and leave in your desk drawer. The Dread Pirate No-Beard writes down his passwords in code and keeps them in a glass vial in his stomach, anchored to his good molar by a piece of hoar's twine. Logging on is as simple as regurgitating the contents of his stomach.

The Dread Pirate No-Beard years for the future wherein single sign ins will be viable. No-Beard would use one of those fancy fingerprint readers but none of the current models read hooks yet. Blasted non-ADA compliant devices! No-Beard was forced to spend 8,000 doubloons to widen the plank to accommodate wheelchairs! Update your damn fingerprint readers! No-Beard went to great lengths to affix Braille all along the keel so blind traitors and cowards could "read" about keel-hauling as they underwent their punishments! Keeping the barnacles off those damn little bumps costs a king's ransom annually!!

Whatever happened to blackmailing dumb cheerleaders into seducing teachers as a way of fixing grades? Kids these days.

San Antonio, Day Four

2006-12-05T16:29:00.000-06:00

Woke up at 9 AM. Barely made it to the free chow line in the lobby before it shut down. Slept again until Noon.

Mrs. No-Beard and I strapped on our best pegs and continued exploring the Riverwalk area. We spent a few hours in La Villita, a collection of artisan shops in old buildings. Half of them were so-so, the rest were filled with good work. My favorite was a place selling the work of artists who pound copper into usable objects. There were various sizes of tabletops that looked awesome, though it’d be kind of hard to get those on the airplane for the return trip.

On the way back from the Alamo some of the local homeless offered Mrs. No-Beard and I their spare change. These Texans sure are polite! No racist hand signals so far today.

Tonight we’ll be going to the Riverwalk to take pretty pretty pictures. I brought my good tripod so the results should be pretty good. Focusing with a hook isn't easy.

Embarrassing story of the day here. Maybe she’ll spin this incident into doing endorsement for Beano.

San Antonio, Day Three

2006-12-04T15:51:00.000-06:00

Woke up at 8:30 AM. Breakfast in the lobby. I've mastered the art of waffle making in only two days. The breakfast crowd is half tourists, half business travelers. The latter are not as good with the waffle makers as the former.

We went searching for the Towers of the Americas, a 750-ish foot tall structure that was built to coincide with the 1968 World's Fair being held in San Antonio. We wandered aimlessly for half an hour, then made our way to the structure through trial and error once we were close enough to see it above the surrounding buildings.

As tall objects go, this tower wasn't spectacular, but it wasn't a tourist trap like that damn Corn Palace. It had some good murals explaining the six different flags that have flown over Texas. I never knew why Six Flags theme parks were named Six Flags. The murals also explained the history of Texas post-statehood, like the governor who was impeached, only to have his wife take the office a few years later. Spooky.

It was very sunny today so the views were good. If I hadn't forgotten my USB memory card reader I'd upload some of the photos. I didn't notice any swaying while I was on the observation deck. Maybe it wasn't windy enough. I definitely noticed it when I was all up in the CN tower.

Took more pictures at the Alamo. Photography isn't allowed in the main museum otherwise I'd have photographed the plaques memorializing the people who died defending the Alamo. Each defender is named along with his or her home state or country. Citizens of England, Wales, Ireland, Germany, and Scotland died defending the Alamo in 1836. No Frenchies perished. Exactly as I suspected.

No accusations of racist hand shaking on the way back to the hotel.

Racist Hand Shakes

2006-12-03T16:57:00.000-06:00

Woke up at 8 AM. Breakfast in the lobby. Better than average, and they had good waffle makers. Ambled back to room, slept until 11 AM.

Walked a block and a half to the Rivercenter Mall. Four stories of shopping, lots of places to eat in the food court, and a Starbucks. The head barista at Starbucks was either suffering from a massive caffeine contact high or seriously losing his mind, because he was acting crazy. Funny crazy, not "Me Russkie, me play joke, me put Polonium 210 in your Coke" crazy. Gingerbread cake. Mmmm.

We went into two different team-center sports stores at the mall, one for the Texas Longhorns, the other for the Dallas Cowboys. I like the Longhorn colors better, but the Cowboys store has thongs, swim suits, and short "cheerleading" outfits. I give the Cowboys store two hooks up.

On the way back from the mall we stopped off at that little Alamo place. I didn't take any pictures because the lighting is horrible today.

Half a block from the hotel we encountered a black guy who was cursing to himself. As Mrs. No-Beard and I passed he informed us that he had just lost his niece. I wondered if he meat lost as in misplaced, or lost as in pining for the fjords, but I didn't ask. I made eye contact with him, smiled, shook his extended hand, and gave him my condolences as we passed. A few steps later I hear: "Why you gotta shake my hand all racist like that?" I had no idea you could shake a hand all racist-like! Here I thought the Hitler High-Five was the only hand gesture in Western civilization that could reasonably be construed to have racist underpinnings. I'm learning all sorts of new things.

His protestations grew more foul as I chuckled to Mrs. No Beard and the two other people waiting for the light to change. I washed my hand once I was back in the room, just in case Jesse "Shakedown" Jackson had sent this guy to poison me.

Texas Bound

2006-12-02T23:45:00.000-06:00

Mrs. No-Beard and I decided to take a vacation from the dangerous waters of the Madison isthmus. We flew out of Madison to Minneapolis and then on to San Antonio. No security problems. The Dread Pirate No-Beard packed his titanium hook in the checked luggage so as to avoid a confrontation. Nothing much to report on the flight part of the trip.

The cabbie who took us from the San Antonio airport to our hotel overlooking the Alamo was pleasantly non-chatty. The cab didn't smell bad.

No problems checking in at the hotel, and we're staying here free because I saved up my frequent-sleeper points all year. Five nights at a better-than-average hotel right in the middle of the historic section of San Antonio could run $1,000 to $1,500. We're staying in a suite with a full kitchen - a must for the Dread Pirate on extended port leaves.

We ventured out for dinner by checking out Google maps and looking up eateries. The directions we got from Google maps weren't quite right. The area around the hotel and the streets not facing the Alamo square isn't pleasant. There were a few winos sleeping it off in doorways. I must note that there is a strong chance that a few of them were not American citizens. Lazy drunk Mexicans are displacing lazy drunk Americans, and I Think The Government Should Do Something About It.

Once we stumbled on the Riverwalk things got decidedly better. The Riverwalk is a section below street level built around San Antonio's canal system. The Riverwalk is lined with restaurants and although it is definitely a tourist attraction it didn't feel cheap and touristy. There were a few theme restaurants - Rainforest Cafe, Hard Rock, and, ugh, Coyote Ugly - but mostly they're not chain operations.

We ate at some anonymous place, the food was so-so. Nothing to blog home about. Then we retired to the hotel for some rich people TV. Flavor of Love, Lifetime crap, and some gut-bustingly funny Web clips on VH1.

Then the Dread Pirate slept, and dreamt of the murky depths of the sea and it's cold, grim secrets.

Bullet

2006-11-28T16:31:00.000-06:00

A bullet is too good for this bitch, but it'll have to do.

Throw Another Kitten on the Fire

2006-11-14T21:45:00.000-06:00

This is totally uncalled for.

Stick, very heavy on the stick, but only because I'm in a good mood today.

The Humpty Dance

2006-11-14T18:22:00.000-06:00

Another cultural zit that can't be popped soon enough...people dry-humping Hummers.

The Google ads that come up on the site are all for Hummer dealers and accessories, of course.

.380 vs. .25

2006-11-13T15:57:00.000-06:00

How I long for concealed carry in Wisconsin...I'd feel much safer if more people like Lumpy were walking around with heaters in Dairyland.

Trolling for Embryos

2006-11-12T23:04:00.000-06:00

The Daily Mail reports on a new service which can test a human embryo for over 200 diseases.

Critics say it'll lead to designer babies where parents select the hair and eye color of their spawn. I don't see the problem with that. Heck, I don't even know if it is possible to screen for eye and hair color yet.

This technique can be used to eliminate hundreds of hereditary diseases. Some of the conditions lead to blindness, some are degenerative, some result in mental and/or physical abnormalities. Why the heck wouldn't two parents who know they carry conditions A and B separately, and know that conditions C - G run in either family back at least two generations. This is efficient! This lowers health care costs in the long run, saves families the emotional and financial burden of carding for special needs children and adults, etc. Where is the downside?

...and don't even think about inventing a "Downs Culture" movement, or claim that disease A has a right to exist because it was once central to the American Indian vision quest process. Gah.

We Don't Need No Water

2006-11-11T14:04:00.000-06:00

Let the frickin' Ka'bah burn...burn frickin' Ka'bah, burn. Inspired by the wack job that Photoshopped the image of Beirut to add more black smoke.

Also, check out these banners regarding Islamofascism in Denmark. I think they'd make great bumper stickers.

Déjà Vu

2006-11-10T22:41:00.000-06:00

Something funny happened today. I was writing a comment on a blog and I needed to figure out the source of a favorite phrase of mine. The phrase pokes fun at the terribly serious Feminists who churn out works of staggering irrelevance in which they claim that men are evil and women are the source of everything good. Somehow I started using the phrase “the mysterious cave of Yaga, from which all knowledge flows” to mock the vagina-worshippers. I think the first use was in a conversation with 3XHAR regarding Catharine MacKinnon or someone of her ilk.

I did a search on Google (search string: +"cave of yaga") and got only one result: A blog entry I wrote in December 2005. I didn’t immediately recognize the name of the link or summary provided by Google, so I followed the link. Duh.

So I guess things have come full circle. I am my own authority with my own twisted mythology. I still don't know where I got the Cave of Yaga from. I vaguely remember reading some feminist literature about the yaga bush, a shrub that had a lot of vaginas in bloom with a small stream running through it. Hmm.

Look Ma, No Rights!

2006-11-10T14:12:00.001-06:00

A recent BBC News article talks about how Britain is the most watched society, with one CCTV camera per 14 people. I assume the writer excludes the good old “don’t trust your neighbor, report him” surveillance. I doubt mankind will ever surpass the later Cold War era human intelligence gathering networks in Communist nations. I’m guessing East Germany in the mid 1970s holds the record. Never have so many spied on so many for so little. Apologies to Churchill.

The article is the latest development in a trend I’ve noticed in the UK over the past 15 years. My knowledge of surveillance in the UK comes mostly from popular music, partially from The Economist, and just a bit from Discover channel shows. I haven’t been following the issue from a privacy rights or legal perspective. If a casual observer like myself has been able to piece together enough information just by paying attention to the background noise then it must be important.

The first blip on the radar would be the privatization push under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. The privatizations may have primed the people to expect or accept that fact that private industry would play a larger role in the management of their societal institutions. I know the privatizations were protested at the time, even in pop culture. More on that later.

The second blip comes from the liner notes of a Prodigy CD. Prodigy is a band from the UK most easily classified as techno/rave or dance music. The CD I’m referring to is Music for the Jilted Generation, released in 1993. In it the band speaks out against pending anti-rave legislation.

Raves were self-organized parties put together by non-professional promoters and mostly consisted of DJs spinning techno, rave, and other dance music, with some live performances by dance-oriented bands. The rave story arc in the UK sounds formulaic: Kids hear music, kids dance, dance parties get huge, the locals ban dancing, and the scene is forced to change. The UK rave movement adapted, first by complying with stringent regulation, then by moving into legal venues like nightclubs when the legislation essentially banned gatherings of more than 100 people.

The critical event here: Club owners agreed to have CCTV cameras installed in their clubs so the police could monitor the activity. I think the trade-off involved the clubs being able to stay open longer or serve alcohol longer, but I'm not sure. Drugs like Ecstasy were common in the rave movement and the thinking was that by bringing raves into clubs and monitoring the clubs the police could stamp out the LSD and Ecstasy drug trade. So now the Brits have cameras in private establishments being monitored by the police.

Imagine if the Great Dane in downtown Madison agreed to have CCTV cameras installed as a trade-off for patrons being allowed to smoke while in the establishment. The cameras could be monitored by people concerned for the health and welfare of children, bar employees, police, etc. I don’t think this is such an outlandish proposition. Anything could happen in Madison.

My next few data points come from articles in The Economist and shows on cable TV. Surveillance in the UK is discussed at a high level, statistics are given showing that crime is reduced in areas with CCTV cameras, etc. The analysis doesn’t go too deep on cable TV. The Economist does a much more thorough job of exploring the pros and cons. Soccer hooliganism is brought under control, but in the early 2000s thuggish behavior is more of a problem.

I don’t know if the number of CCTV camera installations spiked as a result of the September 11, 2001 or July 7, 2005 terrorist attacks. I’m reasonably certain that CCTV surveillance helped with the discovery and roll up of the terrorist cells involved in the London attacks.

The latest blip on my radar came in May 2006 when the UK duo Pet Shop Boys (my personal favorite since the late 1980s) released the album Fundamental. The last track on the album is “Integral”, and is a protest against the recently enacted Identity Cards Act of 2006 (the Act). The Act establishes national ID cards and authorizes the government to collect and store data on UK residents in a database called the National Identity Registry (NIR). Fingerprints, facial scans, and iris scans can be collected and stored in the NIR, and hundreds of government agencies and as many as 48,000 private sector companies will have access to the database. It looks like the data will primarily be captured when passports are renewed, but the scope and mechanisms of the Act are vague. (Read about the legal requirements of the Act.)

The lyrics to "Integral" include these phrases:

Everyone has their own number in the system that we operate under,
We're moving to a situation where your lives exist as information
…
If you've done nothing wrong - you've nothing to fear
If you've something to hide - you shouldn't even be here
You've had your chance, now we've got the mandate
If you've changed your mind I'm afraid its too late

And people say the US is a police state. Yet on the other hand, a recent YouTube posting of a questionable police arrest shows the potential benefits of a watchful society. I'd rather the people do the watching, but don't take that as an endorsement of Johnny Cochran's courtroom antics or Charles Manson's ramblings.

The Libertarian in me doesn’t trust government to do anything but collect taxes, build roads, kill invaders, and enforce contracts. Having worked alongside Internet security experts I definitely do not trust government or private industry to secure data pertaining to my identity and activities.
Then again, I don’t have a problem with CCTV cameras on highways and at major intersections monitoring my driving habits. I suspect people would be better drivers if images of people running stop signs and parking in handicapped spaces when they shouldn’t were posted on the Internet. And I don’t object to the local Starbucks and gas stations having their own CCTV cameras.

At best the UK experiment will shape the course of public surveillance in America.

Finally, more about the opposition to privatization in the UK. The Pet Shop Boys song "Shopping", part of their 1988 release Actually, contains these lyrics:

Were buying and selling your history
How we go about it is no mystery
We check it with the city, then change the law
...
Its easy when you got all the information
Inside help, no investigation
No questions in the house, no give and take
There's a big bang in the city
Were all on the make

I'm not sure the duo was talking about data brokering in the first two lines since the song was more about corruption, but in retrospect its a criticism that could be applied today. If nothing else, the duo is consistent with their politics, even if I don't agree with them all the time.

Free Bathwater! (Baby Included)

2006-11-09T17:12:00.000-06:00

Will Pelosi pull a classic Clintonian staffing move and fire everyone she can to free up positions for political lap dogs, hangers-on, and major contributors? Keep in mind that when Clinton came to power he fired everyone he could. Reno canned all the lawyers at Justice, Clinton fired everyone in the White House including the kitchen staff who'd been there for twenty-some years. Bill and Hillary even wanted to outsource their Secret Service detail!

Rep. Jane Harman is the top-Ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee but she’ll probably be axed because she fraternized with the enemy according to this story. Her crime? Bipartisanship in a time of war.

"There is no seniority on the Intelligence Committee," Ms. Pelosi said. "The
leader or the speaker can appoint a whole new set of people."

Who will take her place? If the Congressional Black Caucus had it’s way it’d be that amazing Carter appointee to the Federal bench, Rep. Alcee “impeached for perjury and conspiracy to obstruct justice” Hastings from Florida. No news on why they picked him, except I’m pretty sure he’s black, so he fits their racist criteria. The West Virginia branch of the Kongressional White KauKus is mum on the issue.

The voters, damn their oily hides, have spoken. We now have a Democratic Congress and a Republican executive. If this doesn’t scream “we want bipartisanship” then I don’t know what does. Pelosi would be wise to avoid a Stalinist purge of the upper and lower chambers, but I suppose she’ll go for the jugular anyways. Looks like my photo retouching skills would come in handy if I were to move to D.C.

And…when are we going to find out Sen. John "Now that [the Cold War] struggle is over, why is it that our vast intelligence apparatus continues to grow?" Kerry’s super secret plan for winning the peace in Iraq? What, for that matter, are the Democrats doing about skyrocketing health care costs, our dependence of foreign oil, the sectarian violence in Iraq, and tort reform to end jackpot justice? Why are the Democrats willing to give Brazil, India, and China a pass on Kyoto? By the time the next American president takes the oath of office China will be the world’s largest CO2 emitter.

If you ask me, things have been getting steadily worse since Tuesday, and America is clearly on the wrong track. I blame the Democrats! Out with the incumbents!

Devil's Lake Hike

2006-11-08T22:09:00.000-06:00

Mrs. No-Beard and I went hiking today at Devil's Lake. It was a beautiful day. Pictures are posted here.

Satan Calling

2006-11-07T20:05:00.000-06:00

Mrs. Dread Pirate No-Beard just got a call from the Devil herself, Sen. Hillary Clinton. To her credit, Mrs. No-Beard hung up immediately.

In other news, the massive right-wing conspiracy tried to stop Chelsea Clinton from voting, and Karl Rove eats babies.

Sacagawea, Indeed!

2006-11-07T15:17:00.000-06:00

Kwik2Jujj sent a link to an interesting article in USA Today (which I like to call the Nation's Coloring Book) concerning an upswing in the use of $2 bills. The Jujj loves those $2 bills.

From the article:

Peter Morici, professor at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, says that with the introduction of the Sacagawea, named for a famous Indian woman, people are beginning to realize the inconvenience of $1 bills.

Errrr, woman? She was bought (or won via gambling) and raped by an imperialist French-Canadian pedophile in her early teens and dragged along on the Lewis and Clark expedition as an unpaid interpreter. She only went along because her sexually abusive and perpetually drunk[1] "husband" (Toussaint Charbonneau, who was already married to another Shoshone woman when he bought/won Sacagawea) was hired as the real interpreter. She was pregnant when they left, for Dog's sake! Who sets out on a hike to the edge of the known world with a drunk, child raping gambling addict when you're pregnant, a minor, and not even his wife but the other woman?!

I think the real story is quite clear: L&C's real mission was to teach the Injuns to gamble and drink, precipitating their eventual downfall and subsequent Bingoization of their once proud culture. The real shame here is that the feminist movement has been complicit in the rewriting of history. What should be viewed as shameful chapter in the American experience, the Indian Child Sex Trade, has been cleaned up enough for Disney[2] to make a quick buck off of it with their revisionist Pocohantas crap. Pocohantas...Mel Gibson as John Smith...Walt Disney, virulent anti-Semite...Mormons descended from the Native American Jews...need I say more?

Note:
[1] I made that part up, but I could be right. And that's what matters here...the emotional truth of the statement, so don't get all picky with my statements, because even if they're not 100% true, they would be true if only the facts were different.

[2] Don't bother searching for Sacagawea on Disney's Website. They officially deny her existence.

Homeowner, What is Good in Life?

2006-11-01T14:02:00.000-06:00

To insure your property.
To pay your policy on time.
To know your insurer isn’t a total ass clown.

Two out of three isn’t bad, right? Herein you will find installment three in my Tales of Insurance Woe series.

Anne and I bought a house earlier this year. As any homeowner knows, if you’re taking out a mortgage on the property being purchased the lender will require you to insure the property.

As part of the purchase process we took out a homeowner policy from State Farm. We relied on our insurance agent (hadn’t been with him long as a result of our last tale of insurance woe) to pick the insurer. State Farm was selected. We did the paperwork, we provided our new home address, and paid the premium. We paid for a full year since we don’t like being bothered with lots of bills.

(Montage of signing paperwork at the closing, moving into the new place, summer turning to autumn.)

Come mid-October we get a letter from the insurer telling us our homeowner policy has been cancelled due to non-payment of the premium, and was cancelled many months ago. I noticed that the letter was addressed to our old address, the apartment we rented for six or so months when we were between homes. Clown Sign 1: Insurer didn’t have our current address, even though we provided the address to the insurer as part of the home purchase process.

So this got me to thinking, even if they didn’t have the correct address and they had mailings come back to them, wouldn’t a reasonable person find it odd that a homeowner policy was being sent to an apartment? The address the mail was going to was obviously and apartment, as the first line of the mailing address read “1234 MAIN ST APT 101” in compliance with USPS addressing standards. Clown Sign 2: Insured’s address was an apartment and policy wasn’t for an apartment.

Furthermore, how did the insurer lose sight of the fact that we paid in full for an entire year? Address nonsense aside, the policy was paid for, we had a scanned image of the cancelled check, and our lender wasn’t squawking that we weren’t insuring the property backing the mortgage. Clown Sign 3: Check? What check?

This marks the second time (that I know of) where Anne and I have gone six months or more without insurance on our primary residence due to a mistake by the insurer.

In defense of the insurance agent, he listened to our complaints and didn’t question them in any way or try to pass the buck to someone else. He cancelled all of our policies with State Farm (we also had auto insurance policies with them) and got us a better deal elsewhere. He said he’s seen a lot of cases like this from State Farm this year, so if you’re using them, you may want to call your agent and make sure State Farm in on the same page.

We got a refund of the remaining premium from State Farm very quickly. Huzzah.

Middle Age

2006-10-30T16:53:00.000-06:00

I had a physical today. It involved a glove and lubricant. I feel dirty.

I guess now I'm officially middle-aged.

Cardinal Bar Halloween 2006 Party

2006-10-29T13:54:00.000-06:00

Pictures from the Cardinal Bar Halloween 2006 Party can be found here.

My favorite costume was the Evil Clown, but the drunken crowd voted Balls as the best.

I-Pass Musings

2006-10-28T16:58:00.000-05:00

Anne and I went down to Chicago last night to see a concert. The only remarkable thing about this trip was how smoothly the traffic went. I broke down and bought an I-Pass transponder earlier this month and I’m wondering why I didn’t buy one years ago.

Flying through the open road tolls at 65 MPH while the unwashed masses dig through the seat cushions for their tin pieces makes my very happy to be an American with the resources to put a Magic Toll Box in my box-on-wheels. Once I get near the Loop the quality of the cars driving around improves noticeably. Suddenly a high percentage of the cars on the road have a base selling price above $50,000, and they’re shiny and look very good flying through the well-light tunnels at 80 or 90 MPH. I generally get out of the way of people with much nicer cars than mine when I’m in the left lane. Why? Maybe if I do it enough it’ll catch on, and when I’m retired and driving a shiny fast convertible Jaguar through the Loop at 90 MPH the person in the crappy car in front of me will get out of my way. It’s some kind of auto karma.

I’m also perfectly fine with paying tolls if the result is a system of properly maintained roads. I also think there is an unspoken agreement between the Illinois state patrol and drivers on the toll way that as long as you’re not driving drunk or your car is on fire then you’re free to go up to 90 MPH without being bothered with a ticket.

When I think about all the money that flows into the state coffers from the toll system I wonder why I don’t hear more complaints from the left that the tolls are an undue burden on the working poor (or whatever victim group is in vogue today.) Imagine the administrative cost of a toll voucher system. Then again it isn’t beyond the pale that a program to offset the costs of the I-Pass transponders and tolls already exists and is underwritten by public or private money. Madison wanted to give money to illegal immigrants to get mortgages, so anything is possible.

The End is Nigh

2006-10-27T14:32:00.000-05:00

The Pinnacle of Western Civilization

I just wasted four hours on YouTube sifting through the results of my search using the keywords “massive bong hit.”

So it has come to this. This and the video of the fat kid drumming and farting. A Web site made up of idiotic video clips and pirated material is sold for $1,650,000,000. How is this not a sign of the Apocalypse, or at least a candidate for the moment Western Civilization jumped the shark?

Halloween Ideas

2006-10-26T14:13:00.000-05:00

If the weather is good I'll go to the Riot of Aught-Six on Saturday.

My favorite idea for right now is for my friends and I to go as the "DiVeRStY KIdS!!" We dress up as offensive stereotypes and sing songs telling people to be more sensitive.

3XHAR has already stated his wish to go as Chief Big Bingo, a Native American who uses "every part of the dollar," tosses out bingo cards, and cries like a little bitch when he sees the garbage, etc. He can also claim to be looking for firewater and bar-hopping, or as I call it, on the Trail of Beers.

Rik (if he goes) should be a lazy, tequila-swigging Mexican laborer, here to steal jobs from hard working Americans. Carry around a poncho, keep complaining that he needs a siesta, speak in broken English, ask people if they need day labor, etc.

Alternately, Rik could be a total retard with thick-ass glasses, a small tight backpack, a forehead extension (for that Downy look), maybe a 'tard helmet, etc. His contribution would to sing/moan along, punctuating his lines with screams of "McDonalds!!" now and then.

I'd prefer to have a zombie, er, Undead American, in the crew. He/she would complain about prejudice, trouble getting a job because s/he's DEAD, how the government cut off the benefits, that not every zombie needs to eat brains, etc.

If we get a chick to go she could be a transgendered freak, non-sexual tranny , etc.

Me, I'll go as...The N-Word! Yes, we'll sing a special N-Word song about other things you can say..."Rearrange the letters and say G-I-N-G-E-R instead, or the brother on parole will shoot you dead...in the ghetto..."

Discuss.

Unemployo II: Extreme Joblesness

2006-10-26T13:45:00.000-05:00

Unemployo the Klown resigned from Berbee earlier this week. Unemployo has compiled a list of frequently asked questions and answers to expedite the process of you getting up to speed on dealing with his new situation.

Q: What the hell were you thinking?

A: First of all, please watch your tone. You have no reason to speak to Unemployo like that, and your judging hurts Unemployo’s self-esteem. It’s bad enough that Unemployo is unemployed now, so don’t pile on the guilt.

There are as many reasons for quitting a job as there are people, but Unemployo’s discontents were pretty vanilla.

First, Unemployo got tired of traveling for work. In the nine months ending September 30, 2006, Unemployo spent more than 50 nights in hotel rooms while on business, including at least two weekend-long stays.

Second, the culture at Unemployo's employer was about to undergo a radical change following the acquisition by CDW, and multi-billion dollar company, and therefore quite evil. It is Unemployo’s opinion that there was nothing but downside in the coming change. Under private ownership anything goes, save for the occasional pressure from institutional investors. As part of a publicly traded company one quarter of missed earnings can spell disaster and plank walking. Unemployo further believes that the imminent culture change was the elephant in the room that no one wanted to acknowledge, kind of like that Family Circus episode where the writer took a handful of downers and drew Grandma teaching Billy the meaning of “bad touch.”

Third, Unemployo was slated to start work on several long-term projects in November and didn't want to have to stop work in the middle of a project.

Q: So now I have to pay for your ass to sit around on the couch all day?

A: Again, please watch the tone! Unemployo is in a very delicate state right now!

To answer your question though, no, you won’t be paying for Unemployo’s “ass to sit around on the couch all day” since Unemployo voluntarily resigned from Berbee. Unemployo does not quality for unemployment benefits at this time, so rest assured your precious $0.001423 per day is not flowing into Unemployo’s coffers.

Q: So what are you plans now?

A: Sir! Unemployo resents the implication and demands an apology forthwith!

Unemployo will spend more time taking pictures and doing housework. Mostly Unemployo will hold court at the Findlay Plaza Starbucks on University Avenue in Madison, WI, since Unemployo recently signed up for T-Mobile Internet access. There, Unemployo will continue to take pictures and post them to the so-called “Internet,” finish up his screenplay for Chappaquiddick II: The Beginning, take some college classes, and hatch various schemes to bring down the system while turning a handsome profit at the same time.

Eventually, Unemployo will get another job, probably working with SQL Server 2005, business intelligence, and/or data warehousing, but no definite plans have been worked out. Unemployo is much more concerned with being than doing, so keep your shaming to yourself. Anyways, in his current mood, Unemployo’s job interviews would be shorter than a game of Jenga between Janet Reno and Michael J. Fox on North Korean space shuttle.

Q: You really don’t like North Korea, do you?

A: Unemployo feels sorry for anyone living under Kim Jong Il but does not hate the North Koreans per se.

Q: Is it true that Michael J. Fox is “faking it?”

A: It is Unemployo’s deepest desire that Rush Limbaugh be dropped by as many stations and advertisers as possible in order to teach him a lesson. What Rush did was disgusting, and he owes Fox and all sufferers of degenerative diseases everywhere a heartfelt apology, and Unemployo doesn’t mean a Clintonian “I did not make fun of that cripple, Michael J. Fox” apology, a real one. Unemployo makes fun of the disabled in a lighthearted way, so as to draw attention to their plight and say “Hey, we’re all human,” and empathizes with the handicapped, even if they are sometimes faking it.

Q: That’s offensive.

A: Gotcha! That wasn’t even a question, so we’re done here. You will be hearing from Unemployo's lawyers, you monster!

No-Beard Porn Reduction Act of 2006

2006-10-14T20:53:00.000-05:00

The Dread Pirate No-Beard and Mrs. No-Beard have reached a tentative agreement expected to reduce the porn holdings of the No-Beard household by 90%. The agreed framework calls for the Dread Pirate No-Beard to examine his hoard in the near future, though the agreement does not specify a deadline. According to an anonymous source Mr. No-Beard will be allowed to keep "only the good stuff." Mrs. No-Beard, in exchange for the reduced pile of filth, has agreed to give up absolutely nothing.

It is believed that the inspection process could last several months as the framework does not call for a specific investigation methodology. Details of the disposal process were not made available, though a highly-placed source claims that Mrs. No-Beard has stipulated that the material cannot be sold nor "left in a field somewhere."

The Dread Pirate No-Beard could not be reached for comment.

I Known I Shouldn't Gloat, But...

2006-10-13T11:59:00.000-05:00

It looks like Air America is circling the bowl again financially. Read all about it here.

I'm not surprised - anger and hatred can only take you so far. I'd listen for more than a few minutes at a time if the hosts would talk about ideas and stop hurling insults. I get that they think Bush is an idiot and/or a criminal, and I get that they're against anything Bush is for, but talking about the religious right wanting to stack up the dead to build a stairway to heaven or pretending to be Newt Gingrich threatening to "poopie my pants" in baby talk does nothing to inform, educate, or persuade.

I usually couldn't make it to a commercial break when I was listening. The few times I did I heard ads inviting people to sign up for class action lawsuits and public service announcements filled with racial stereotypes warning me to avoid discrimination when renting apartments.

One theory: Now that we're seeing some meaningful tort reform in pockets of the US maybe the cash flows are drying up in the class action litigation industry and they can't afford to advertise their shakedown racket on Air America anymore.

When Idiots Attack

2006-10-12T18:14:00.000-05:00

Has no one in corporate America learned anything from the past decade of e-mail fueled scandals and lawsuits?

This showed up in my inbox at work today, along with an attached résumé. The names have been changed to protect the stupid.

Lord Vader;

I received this resume as a candidate for our open Death Star Technician III position. He had indicated he worked at DeathComm and had designed the HN5X1-88 Gravitic Purifiers for them.

Unofficially, would your team recommend I bring this person in to help me with:
1) Ongoing Blowing-Stuff-Up support.
2) Assistance with the Klown Reverser project.

If you prefer, I’m OK with just a verbal response. This will go no farther then between you and I.

Thank you

Moron J. Assclown
Head Bee Watcher
Lap Pinkies'R'Us

Unofficially...a verbal response...this will go no farther... Yikes. he should have just entered "Blink twice if he's a J-O-O" for the message subject.

The really funny thing is that the message was forwarded to me by a co-worker. He didn't even have the guile or brains to remove the incriminating portions of the original e-mail!