July Boing the boing

My Friend Kerry: Sometimes when I go to a different Starbucks they ask for a name to write on the cup. Sometimes I just give them my last name. They usually spell that right. Never know how they’ll spell my first name!

Me: I have an entire Seinfeld-ian premise based on this. I mean try ordering coffee with a name like “Aaron.” The soft vowel at the start, the soft consonant at the end. The myriad of names you could mistake it for. Eric. Derek. Erin. Darin. My Aaron always gives the name “Eddie” when he orders sandwiches in a deli. But his friends always goof it up by calling him Aaron. So he starts insisting that his friends call him Eddie when they’re in the deli. This problem compounds when his friends start calling him Eddie outside of the deli. This pisses him off to no end, so his friends start upping the ante by calling him “Deli Eddie.”

Unbeknownst to any of them, there is a local crime family called the “Deliedies.” One day, one of their mobster rivals overhears them calling him “Deli Eddie.”

Hilarity ensues.


And now, some Poops from the CS188 Archive:


Look! James Brown! AND PUPPEHS!

Genius.


parng baner
“Now, I hope I don’t have to explain to you people that, in this particular scenario, I’m Little Bunny Foo Foo. See, and Obama, see, he’s the field mice. Get it? See, I’m whapping him on the head.

“Well now, I haven’t really thought that far ahead. You say the Good Fairy turns the rabbit into a what?

“What the hell is a Goon?”


That’s right, everybody. Today is the day the House of Representatives voted to sue President Obama.

This is going to be fun.

Homer Eating Popcorn


Wasn’t nostalgia neat?

Ten years ago today, you and I met a man named Barack Obama.

The speech is still as stirring as it was in 2004, when I recall personally being glued to the television, watching this young man energize this crowd so effectively, and immediately registering a profound hope for the Democratic Party. We were at the time in the midst of running a lackluster ticket, and we didn’t even have an inkling then of what a disgusting human being John Edwards would turn out to be. We still didn’t think it would go as it did, as it was easy to perceive that George W. Bush was a dismal failure as the Premier Executive of this fine land and that we could pummel him with Fred the Elephant Boy on the ticket.

The speech also highlights what makes many Obama supporters bristle about him today. This has been a President who has often above all else tried to achieve unity, a tendency that has often cost us. But when you see him express his vision at this nascent age, and when you contemplate how he has led as President, it’s difficult to deny the man’s integrity.

Barack Obama is still the real deal, kids.


There was a “Photoshop Wil Wheaton” challenge on the Twitter today. My entry:

@wilw just doesn’t get it. #photoshopwilwheaton

I know. Sloppy. I used Sumo Paint and really laid it on thick with the blur tool. Oh, well.

P.S. There’s a Tumblr!

Wasn’t nostalgia neat?

Ten years ago today, you and I met a man named Barack Obama.

The speech is still as stirring as it was in 2004, when I recall personally being glued to the television, watching this young man energize this crowd so effectively, and immediately registering a profound hope for the Democratic Party. We were at the time in the midst of running a lackluster ticket, and we didn’t even have an inkling then of what a disgusting human being John Edwards would turn out to be. We still didn’t think it would go as it did, as it was easy to perceive that George W. Bush was a dismal failure as the Premier Executive of this fine land and that we could pummel him with Fred the Elephant Boy on the ticket.

The speech also highlights what makes many Obama supporters bristle about him today. This has been a President who has often above all else tried to achieve unity, a tendency that has often cost us. But when you see him express his vision at this nascent age, and when you contemplate how he has led as President, it’s difficult to deny the man’s integrity.

Barack Obama is still the real deal, kids.


There was a “Photoshop Wil Wheaton” challenge on the Twitter today. My entry:

@wilw just doesn’t get it. #photoshopwilwheaton

I know. Sloppy. I used Sumo Paint and really laid it on thick with the blur tool. Oh, well.

P.S. There’s a Tumblr!

Upstate

Why do we sit through a polar vortex through the winter? Why brave subzero temperatures, frozen faces, wet feet and shivers, and a wintry grasp that seems never ending?

This:

landscape at the farm

If you look closely, you can see a small farm creature named Anna B. Cat making her way across the pasture.

I did warn you I’d be playing with the panoramic camera setting.


Yes, sir!

“Using drugs meant for individuals with medical needs to carry out executions is a misguided effort to mask the brutality of executions by making them look serene and beautiful — like something any one of us might experience in our final moments. But executions are, in fact, brutal, savage events, and nothing the state tries to do can mask that reality. Nor should we. If we as a society want to carry out executions, we should be willing to face the fact that the state is committing a horrendous brutality on our behalf.” (U.S. 9th Circuit Court Chief Judge Alex Kozinski)


The Cheese Table and Other Adventures

This was a banner day.

The mobile phone I previously used, an LG Marquee, was originally purchased as a point-of-entry phone to a new mobile service. I did not want to buy a higher-end phone at the time until I had faith in the carrier, Ting, a Sprint MVNO that has rates a human being can actually understand. The coverage is generally good, although it can get touchy when I’m out at Gonfalon. But that is the case with many carriers; some sort of hole or triangle seems to have converged on that spot that zaps mobile phone signals.

Anyway, the Marquee has gotten mighty sluggish of late, and I decided it was time to upgrade. Today I took delivery of an iPhone 5 (one new development with Ting for the last year or so was its ability to carry certain models of iPhone). I had forgotten what a difference it can make to have a good phone. I’m sure I’ll be bugging people with panoramic photographs soon enough (can’t wait to shoot one out at the farm).

Dad also helped me deliver two key pieces of furniture today; my office chair and this short table that Hic found for five bucks and that my Dad stabilized mightily with extra nuts and bolts. I have needed a piece in my studio apartment to give me just a little bit more counter space. This is that piece. It’s perfect.

cheese table

I will most often use the thing for preparing the cheese and Triscuits snack that so often fortifies me. So it’s a “cheese table” to me. What it means though is extra counter space, an extra drawer, another shelf, and all that at a size that isn’t too obnoxious.

We ended the day with blackened catfish, sweet corn from a farmer’s stand that may be the best corn I’ve ever eaten, and broccolies right from the back yard. A bannner day, indeed. Did I mention how beautiful the weather was today?

Bring Back the Gibbet!

Gene Wilder Young Frankenstein

So…if state-sanctioned punitive killing doesn’t bother you all by its lonesome…

…or if it doesn’t bother you that a convicted double murderer was reported to have gasped for air 660 times over the course of 90 minutes while his botched execution commenced…he was a killer anyways, let him suffer like his victims, that sort of thing? Okay.

How about that states are now using inmates as test subjects to help formulate better ways to put citizens to death?

How much creepier does it have to get?


Bring Back the Gibbet!

Gene Wilder Young Frankenstein

So…if state-sanctioned punitive killing doesn’t bother you all by its lonesome…

…or if it doesn’t bother you that a convicted double murderer was reported to have gasped for air 660 times over the course of 90 minutes while his botched execution commenced…he was a killer anyways, let him suffer like his victims, that sort of thing? Okay.

How about that states are now using inmates as test subjects to help formulate better ways to put citizens to death?

How much creepier does it have to get?


This is Jim Rockford. At the tone leave your name and message, I’ll get back to you.

“For the same price I can get an actor with two eyes.” (Studio Boss Harry Cohn, upon rejecting Peter Falk’s screen test for columbia Pictures. One of the wrongest guys ever.)

For a guy who gets mighty nostalgic about ’70s television, whose Tivo more often than not tops out with content from MeTV, it’s been quite a week. First, James Garner, primarily known as private eye Jim Rockford, dies. Second, filed under “Hollywood is out of ideas,” talk of a Columbo re-tread surfaces.

Of course, when a guy as iconic as Garner discorporates, it makes a guy like me go look him up. Here are a few things I found in his Wiki you might not expect:

  • He was a veteran, having served 14 months in Korea with the 5th Regimental Combat Team in the Korean War.
  • He was a Sooners fan. Garner was a native of Oklahoma and frequently attended football games at OU. He never graduated high school but received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree at OU in 1995.
  • He marched on Washington with Martin Luther King Jr. “In his autobiography, Garner recalled sitting in third row listening to King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.”
  • He was a lifelong Democrat. “For his role in the 1985 CBS miniseries Space, the character’s party affiliation was changed from Republican as in the book to reflect Garner’s personal views. Garner said, ‘My wife would leave me if I played a Republican.'”
  • Garner died one month prior to his 58th wedding anniversary. The story goes that he met her at an Adlai Stevenson political rally in 1956 and they married two weeks later.

Seems to me the guy was every bit as likeable as he seemed on the TV machine.


Aaron has mixed feelings about the idea of a Columbo remake with Mark Ruffalo in the title role. I got a better idea: Let’s do Baretta first.

Now. Let’s get to one more little thing you may or may not have known: One of Steven Spielberg’s first jobs? Directing the first episode of “Columbo.”


HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA


Creationist Ken Ham calls to end space program because aliens are going to hell anyway


Nice Job

To the young mother I saw allowing her young towhead son to drag her around the grocery while he sang a made-up nonsensical song and seemed to be the happiest person on Earth at that moment, to you, for allowing him to pull you and for singing along right with him, I say: You’re doing it right.