"Teachers are the men and women who might be working harder than anybody."
Might be, but they're not.
No offense, teachers. Yes, you're doing stuff all day for money. Yes, you're tired at the end of the day.
But working HARD?
PFFFFFT!
HARD work is the stuff you see featured on a show narrated by Mike Rowe.
Put it this way: if your work doesn't involve you having to wear some sort of safety gear, or if you don't end the day reeking of the insides of some sort of food-animal, your job ain't HARD.
Full disclosure - I ain't worked hard since I wore steel-toed boots and earplugs in the Navy, and that gig ended in 1991.
And let's reform [taxes] based on a very simple principle: Warren Buffett's secretary should not be paying a higher tax rate than Warren Buffett. It's a simple principle.
Ok, so why doesn't Obama take the obvious path of cutting Warren Buffett's secretary's taxes?
I swear, Obama's answer to desegregating the South would've been to ban drinking fountains completely and not let ANYBODY ride in the front of the bus.
This product costs $50 and will "charge your iPhone" using 4 AA batteries - although it's really just a battery-powered USB port and is completely unrelated to the iPhone.
Ok, so there's this "Fast and Furious" scandal where people are upset that the government sold guns to murderous Mexican drug cartels who shot people with them.
Am I the only one who thinks that the problem here is that murderous Mexican drug cartels are shooting people?
Update: Looks like the sales the ATF made were illegal and would've landed a legitimate gun dealer in prison. Ok, we can get worked up about that, too.
Mitt Romney is the greasy pick-up artist that the hot chick at the bar goes home with, but dumps within 3 weeks when she finds out that every bone in his body is filled with scum instead of marrow.
Thing is, if she opted for a more frugal lifestyle and made some disciplined investment choices, Secretary could sock away enough to start living off her capital gains in about 10 years.
Then she could retire and enjoy that 17% lifestyle.
UPDATE: Forbes jumps into the guessing game with "$200,000 to $500,000", but their numbers are more of a stunt just to squeeze Google juice out of a headline, rather than any sort of serious investigation into the matter.
What caught my eye was that this post was tagged (among other things) as "subtle racism".
Nope. It's not.
The dictionary says racism is "a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement."
The Life cereal folks aren't going by belief. They're basing their packaging designs on market research and sales data.
I haven't seen this data, but here's what I infer:
Black people are more likely to buy sugary cereals.
I don't know if that's true, but I assume it is, because corporations tend to pursue profitable marketing strategies, and marketing strategies based on bad data usually aren't profitable.
Seriously, this administration really needs to start running its logos past right-wing haters like me before releasing them, because their inner circle of sycophants will not tell them the truth.
Because in this case, either:
A) That really is a weird boner
B) This child has the boobs of a 98-year-old woman
Now, I didn’t think that this was some sort of troll post that was trying to get people to destroy their old records, but I didn’t fully expect it to work well either. My prediction was that the record would look new and shiny, but essentially sound the same. Boy was I ever wrong.
It sounded like a completely new record; there are no more snaps, crackles or pops! To make sure my ears weren’t fooling me, I flipped to the other side which I hadn’t cleaned. Sure enough, it sounded terrible. So with just a few dabs of cheap wood glue, my old record was given new life. Fix approved.
Yes, that sounds weird, but he's got before & after audio clips proving that it works.
5. Favorite city - San Francisco. Certainly not for the politics or the availability of parking spaces (or the fact that it was where I discovered that an automatic transmission car CAN roll backwards while in a forward gear). However, in my Navy days, I was stationed right across SF Bay in Alameda, and when the work was done on the ship for the day, I'd head to SF & see what was to be seen. By the time I left for the East Coast a couple years later, I knew that city better than 3/4 of the natives. It was a fun place. I've been back a few times to visit a great-aunt-in-law, and it still is.
6. Favorite pastime - Surprisingly, it's still blogging, even though it's technically also my day job.
7. Favorite clothing - Summer: wife-beater, shorts, socks & sandals (hey, I'm married, I don't have to look stylish). Winter: sweats - big & baggy.
8. Favorite animal - Cats. Got 5. I like the fact that they just seem so damn HAPPY to be near me. They're like Tribbles with faces.
9. Favorite flower - Rose. I'm a classic romantic. I've given one to my wife every month on our anniversary since we've been married. Next up: #150
10. Favorite music - Blue Oyster Cult. I didn't mention this before, but when I went to SF in my Navy days, it was by bicycle. That's right, I'd ride my bike from the base in Alameda (where they keep the nuclear wessels), through the Posey Tube, and hop the BART into The City. And yes, riding uphill sucked just as much as you'd imagine it would, but on the other hand, I didn't have to worry about finding a parking spot. All I needed was a street sign or lamppost. Anyway, I had a Walkman strapped to my hip for the journey, and in the couple of years I was there, I wore out three cassettes of "On Your Feet, Or On Your Knees".
Visited my nephew last weekend, with some neodynium magnets (small disc) in tow.
Nephew rooted around in the garage and found a couple lengths of copper pipe and we did some experimentation.
Notes from the exercise.
* The fewer magnets we used, the slower they fell.
* The narrower the pipe, the slow the magnet falls.
* Putting one pipe inside another and dropping one magnet down - awesome slo-mo tumble. If I were putting this experiment together on purpose, I'd find a pipe with a diameter just barely bigger than the magnet, with the walls of the pipe as thick as possible for maximum effect.
Also that weekend, got to shoot a large stuffed Elmo with my Glock 17 9mm. Oddly (to me), the entrance wounds had huge tufts of stuffing poking out of them. This surprised me, since I would've expected all the stuffing to be poking out the exit wounds. Can anyone explain this?
Also, also discovered that the Tickle Me Elmo doll is actually rather a marvel of design engineering, the way he rolls around on the floor - even on his side - and can still stand up on his feet afterwards. Very annoying, yet very impressive.
Very disturbing, too, since his "knee-slapping" gesture bears a passing resemblance to an exaggerated masturbation gesture. (see the 18 second mark in this video)
Final note - if you drop a neodynium magnet into a gravel driveway, it will pick up very fine particles of rust from years of cars driving over the spot. The particles are so fine that you will not be able to pick them off by hand. To remove them, I put the dirty magnet on one side of my shirttail, and a clean magnet on the other side. The rust particles were then drawn into the fabric. You could use a rag or a paper towel, if you're fastidious.
Paul Ryan (full disclosure - he's actually my Congressman and I generally like his work) is proposing that we "close corporate tax loopholes" then lower the overall tax rate.
Bullshit.
Open the loopholes wider.
Say you've got a tax break "loophole" for solar panel manufacturers. Expand that sucker to cover any company that makes any part for any other company that produces electricity.
Which still seems unfair, so expand it to include ANY manufacturer.
Which still seems unfair, so expand it to the service industries, too.
And you end up with a free market that spends its money to make stuff and provide services that people want, instead of a socialist economy that spends its money on useless, make-work programs that people can do without.
We need more and bigger "loopholes", not fewer & smaller.
But I'll get behind Ryan's plan on one condition:
Lower the tax rate FIRST.
Because I just don't trust the DC folks not to conveniently "forget" to do it if they saved it for second.
Chris Matthews, insisting that automation kills jobs: "You used to go to a gas station, you'd have somebody would check your tires, check your oil. There ain't anybody there, there's nobody working at a gas station!"
I used to work at a pizza place that has since closed its doors. In Chris's blinkered mind, this means I'm now unemployed.
Fact is, I got a job in a better industry - conservative talk radio. Which, ironically, has as its bread and butter the idiot statements of ignorant liberals like Chris Matthews.
I saw the pilot episode of "The Secret Circle" last night. Beloved Wife tried comparing it to "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," and it made me realize what separated "Buffy" from the current crop of teen-angst supernatural-creature shows (besides the fact that Joss Whedon knows that dialogue can be used for something besides killing screen time).
Buffy and her friends smiled and had fun sometimes.
Not in evidence in TSC.
Which is, as far as I'm concerned, just another "Pretty White Kids With Problems" show:
Embedding's been disabled, but you should watch this video.
At a 9/11 ceremony, during the flag-folding portion, Michelle Obama, turned to Barack and said something. Barack nodded yes. Then Michelle made a disgusted face and shook her head.
Now, the most charitable lip-reading I've heard was that she said, "all this just to fold a flag?", but that's not necessarily definitive.
What IS definitive is that she made a disgusted face at a 9/11 ceremony, and it wasn't because she was thinking about the people who did this.
I'll just describe this as "inappropriate", and mention in passing that I'm leaving out the half-a-dozen or so sailor-talk adjectives that belong in front of that word.
I saw the word "jazzercise" today, and it reminded me that some newly made-up words are just damned irritating.
On the other hand, it's what separates us from the French, who have to send all words through a committee before they can officially be made up, so they wind up with crap like "l'Internet" and "blogue".
God Bless America and it's hyperflexible language.
I haven't tried these, but my wife occasionally makes bacon-wrapped water chestnuts, and the recipe includes dipping them in brown sugar before baking them. Which mean that the bottom of the baking dish becomes coated in what is, essentially, bacon-grease-infused caramel.
This picture is an original work of art by Bryan Larsen, which I found pre-9/11/01 at the Quent Cordair Art Gallery site. It fascinated me enough to bookmark it then, and I've viewed it many times since. Both professional quality and poster prints of this image are available via the Quent Cordair site.
The following text appears at the first link:
The following letter was written by Quent Cordair on Friday, September, 14, 2001, to our mailing list:
Dear friends, family and associates,
As a former U.S. Marine, I once carried a rifle in our defense. I've two younger brothers in the military who now stand ready to cover that end of things. The firemen, doctors, rescue personnel, blood donors, the brave New Yorkers and others on the scene are giving what they have to give to the effort. Philosophers are fighting with the pen. The artists' tools are uniquely valuable as well.
As a gallery owner, I offer what I have -- a single image to inspire, to counter the endless images of the destruction which we've all endured over the past days. This image stands in lucid contrast, in defiance of those who would destroy. It is a re-affirmation of who we are, of what we've created, of what we've built, of what we will rebuild and build higher yet, with unthwarted and unconquered determination. Those who would destroy us have not touched our essence.
My thanks to the artist, Bryan Larsen, who during the months in which others were plotting to destroy the World Trade Center, was busy creating, featuring the towers in an artwork which identifies and celebrates in theme all the towers stood for. The creation of this painting while others were targeting the painting's subject for destruction was no coincidence; there is no irony in the timing. Each side identified the WTC as a vital symbol of America in these times; one side sought to destroy that value, the other to celebrate it and build on it. In retrospect, the artwork stands in memorial. The World Trade Center was not fully appreciated, by many, until it was gone.
May this image serve as inspiration as we recover and look to the future. Please feel welcome to share it with all, to remind ourselves, and the world, of who we are, undaunted and unbeaten. God bless America, those who built it, those who will build again, and higher.
Someone got to my blog by Googling "cause i can't get it out" (without quotes).
Is anyone else feeling a little disturbed while contemplating what the "it" might be?
Having just watched Season 5 of Dexter, I'm inclined to think in terms of blood stains on carpets, but that's probably just me.
Anyway, for the record, the search led to this post, which at the time was the number 2 search result.
Oh, and don't watch that video, because you won't be able to get that song out of your head.
Semi-off-topic, Dexter has some of the most brilliant dialogue ever written because - while sounding perfectly natural and technically unremarkable, it consistently works on more than one level. Which is next to impossible to pull off smoothly, let alone make look easy. As a professional writer (of sorts), I envy these people their talent.
If you want it should last your kid's life, too, then only laminate the front of your documents. Seriously, unless you plan on dipping your document into a bowl of soup, the front is really the only part that needs protection from wear & tear.
After you laminate the front, just trim off the excess plastic and a *tiny* bit of paper around the edge, and you'll have a perfect seal.
There's a new zombie shooting game with a marketing hook that has a distinct appeal to a certain segment of the population, and all anybody wants to talk about is that it's "offensive" because the zombies are named after outspoken Republicans.
So?
What I want to know is, is it fun to play?
Look, I've been hooked on Doom, and I've been hooked on Peggle, and I've been hooked on all sorts of games in between. The ONLY criteria to judge a video game by is whether it's fun.
And until I hear an honest review that covers that aspect, I'm out of the conversation.
Oh, and I'd try playing it myself, but I don't want to boost the traffic stats for this liberal asshole if the game is boring, repetitive, non-intuitive, unchallenging, and has unresponsive controls.
Catchy tune, but that girl needs to learn how to enunciate, so I missed some of the descriptions.
Fortunately she included the lyrics under the video.
As do I
Your best bet is probably to pause if can't understand what she's mumbling and look it up:
Big hair, dreadlocks, little skirt, red box Hot dog, puppeteer, smiley shorts, swipe right here
Tom Hanks, pet goat, belt buckle, Joseph's coat Jelly fish, call girl, prison mate, gonna hurl
Skin cap, vanilla chip, pony tail, pirate ship No shirt, no shoes, oops I took a poop
Spiderman, back boobs, bumble bee, bad tubes Metal creep, hipster creep, little bo peep lost her sheep
Chorus 1 These are the people of Walmart Through mark downs, roll backs, and shopping carts These are the people of Walmart Where we save money and shop smart only at Walmart
Verse 2 Jamie Fox, Santa Clause, Woodstock, butt floss Man dress, Mother Goose, mullet time, car got loose
Scary fruit, day care, twilight, Kentucky hair Campout, fishing line, golden girls, too much wine
Pedicure, race fan, horse mane, ladies' man Where's my shirt, where's my nurse, Masters of The Universe
Bay Watch, rubber band, moonshine, wonderland Bozo, hang low, Rocky Picture Horror Show
Chorus 2 These are the people of Walmart Through mark downs, roll backs, and shopping carts These are the people of Walmart Where we save money and shop smart only at Walmart
Verse 3 Man purse, milk shake, skid row, beer break Uni tard, Lean Cuisine, fire sale, 80s dream
Bieber's dad, camo crack, body flag, biscuit back Tramp stamp, checkout line, Civil War, danger sign
Bathing suite, Grateful Dead, booty bomb, wide spread Long hair, health care, Victoria Secret's worst nightmare
Daniel Boone, Pucker pup, Dr. Scholl's, grow up Half sale, rib sale, tailgater total fail
Chorus 3 These are the people of Walmart Through mark downs, roll backs, and shopping carts These are the people of Walmart Where we save money and shop smart only at Walmart
Break Where people are accepted for who they are No ones gonna stop them from following their heart If Sam were alive he would make you his choice So stand up now and smile and rejoice
Chorus 4 These are the people of Walmart Through mark downs, roll backs, and shopping carts These are the people of Walmart Where we save money and shop smart only at Walmart
Verse 4 Mr. T, Flava Flav, not sure, white slave Workout, rump roast, sailor moon, hairy ghost
Cupcake, caveman, beer run, soda fan Ripped pants, onesie, lion boy, snuggie
Meat isle, Huck Finn, beautifail, too much skin Gonna cry, gonna die, gonna jungle bunny ride
Moth attack, board game, hangin out, no shame Squeeze play, NRA, I have no more to say
Chorus 5 These are the people of Walmart Through mark downs, roll backs, and shopping carts These are the people of Walmart Where we save money and shop smart only at Walmart
The background on this video is kind of annoying, so you might want to just hit "play" and then go about your regular web-surfing regimen while your ears drink in intricate melodies that human fingers should, logically, not be able to play on this instrument:
Apparently "GOOP" is Gwyneth Paltrow's "weekly-ish newsletter that dispenses droplets of wisdom on how to eat, exercise, organize, and generally, be like her."
A blogger at ABC News took exception (and rightly so) to Paltry's tone-deaf let-them-eat-cake advice to the little people. Normally I'd join in on the Gwyn-bashing, but - just for fun - I figured out how a normal woman could live like Gwyneth Paltrow without telling lies to a camera for a living, marrying rich, or spending a ton of money [my advice in bold]:
-----------------
Below, an approximate breakdown of how much it would cost to follow some of the life advice listed in the latest installment of GOOP:
"I've found that having a trainer come to my house on a Monday really motivates me -- she's knocking at the front door so going back to sleep is NOT an option." Average cost of an hour-long session with a personal trainer, according to the National Board of Fitness Examiners: $60 to $70. Alarm clock - $10
"When I got downstairs this morning at the crack of whenever, the coffee machine said "ERROR 8" and wouldn't let me make the cup I had been dreaming about. This begs the question: is it odd to dream yourself to sleep thinking about the next morning's coffee?" Cost of the Jura Capresso Impressa Z5 Espresso & Coffee Maker, which is prone to flashing "ERROR 8:" $2,300. Mr. Coffee 12-cup - $17
"I'm currently obsessed with the Tracy Anderson Method and do the Perfect Design DVD three times a week. I even take the DVD traveling!" Cost of the Perfect Design DVD set: $79.95. Pop in one of your old Madonna cassettes and dance around like you did when you were 17 until it's done. - Free
"I bring my iPad and use the Flipboard app to curate my social media (Facebook, Twitter and categories that are important to me: business, technology, style, design, fashion)." Cost of an iPad: $499 to $829. Turn off your computer and read a damn book - Free (from the library)
"I have acupuncture at 9.30pm at night. It's a wonderful end of the day." Average cost of an acupuncture treatment, according to the Society for Acupuncture Research: $60 to $100. Scatter thumbtacks on the floor. Lay down on them - $2
"If I'm really in a rush I have a Shaklee vanilla shake." Cost of Shaklee's vanilla shake mix: $57.55. Leave a 5-quart bucket of store-brand vanilla ice cream out on the counter. Wait. Drink goop - $5
"A great time saver is to have a weekly blowout. This means that you don't need to wash your hair each day -- the time that you save with a blowout can save you minutes in the morning." Average cost of a blowout in New York City: $60. Don't wash your hair, make a face in the mirror, put your hair in a ponytail & call it good - Free (use rubber band stolen from work)
"I was given an amazing present of a makeup lesson with Wallet Lubrich. She taught me how to do my daily makeup in 5 minutes. No joke, I can dress, do my make up and be out the door in 15 minutes." Average cost of a lesson from a makeup expert in New York City: $100. Leave several of the top buttons open on your blouse. Now no one will notice your makeup - Free.
"Got home and had a fitting with super stylist Elizabeth Saltzman for the upcoming Nashville trip (what to wear, what to wear?) from 1-2." Average cost of an hour-long session with a celebrity stylist: $200. Try something on, ask your man if it makes your ass look fat, believe him when he says "no" - Free.
Estimated average cost for a portion of the GOOP life: $3,606.50.
From the pen of Graumagus of Frizzen Sparks [Modified slightly from the original to make it more universally applicable.]
I hope you're unemployed long enough for your benefits to run out and have to resort to giving blowjobs in an alley to survive, but your educated incompetence would probably deprive you of even the meager protein that secondary career would provide, and they’d find your emaciated corpse in the sewer identified only by the name on your pocket protector.
Oddly eough, it was NOT inspired by the current occupant of the White House, although I could easily imagine myself directing this at him or any of the Harvard Smartie policy-wonks on his staff that pop up on MSNBC every day telling us how Obama's policies will start creating jobs, rainbows, and unicorns any minute now, but he just has to give a few more speeches and spend a few more truckloads of IOU's first.
Because I had my iPad with me at the time of the accident, I was able to immediately notify my friends and family of what had happened once I arrived in the ER. . . . I did briefly leave my iPad with my wife during the surgery itself, but she gave it back to me immediately after the surgery. Other than that, it did not leave my side while in the hospital.
While in the hospital after my surgery, I used the iPad to read eBooks, check my e-mail, surf the internet, and keep up my regular blogging. It was a real morale booster to be able to continue as much of my regular online routine as possible, despite my impaired physical condition.
Yeah, because you can't do any of that with a laptop, right?
Blogrolling was once a very convenient 3rd-party service where you could create lists of URLs and then just use a short bit of javascript to display them in your blog's sidebar, instead of having to use individual lines of complicated HTML code. A good time-saver.
Unfortuately, Blogrolling went belly up. They were nice enough to give fair warning, so you at least had a chance to copy your links and hard-code them before they went away. Not their fault. Things change. It's the dynamic nature of the internet.
The bad news is that there was a line of javascript that you had to place in your template to make it work, and if you used the service back in the day, but never removed the script, then instead of just "not working" like it has for the last few months, it causes the blogrolling.com placeholder page to pop up.
The good news is that it's an easy fix. Just delete the blogrolling.com javascript from your template. It looks something like:
There's about a 90% chance that the first word out of your mouth at the end of this video will be "...damn...", because there really isn't that much else to say.
But it wasn't until I casually remarked that the three sock set came in a square Minecraft dirt block with a grass lid that I got any reaction.
"Screw the socks," muttered Elder Son. "I just want the box!"
Well, true confessions time, there's a product that I want very badly, but only for the package. I couldn't care less about the quality of the contents:
Anybody else ever fall in love with a clever bit of packaging?
And so The Greatest Speech Ever Given, by the Smartest Man Who Ever Lived, is now being moved up to 7 pm so that it won't interfere with the football game...even though it means few, if any, people living on the West Coast will be able to see it (at 4 pm, local time).
I'm not buying "poor deprived West Coasters" as a legitimate complaint.
How can this honestly be an issue? It's 2011. Everybody in the country with indoor plumbing and electricity owns a VCR unless they've replaced it with a DVR. Inconvenient program scheduling is not a conflict for anyone. All of America has been time-shifting shows for decades. It's second nature, and it's done without a second thought.
I'm not blaming HnC for missing this point, he was busy researching and writing his cartoon (which is a daily read for me, by the way, his stuff is unerringly brutal on the idiocy of this administration) and it just slipped by. Besides, it originated with some too-smart journalist elsewhere.
You've got to have good math skills. You have to have good science skills. You have to have good communications and writing skills. If you don't, it's going to be very hard to get a job.
Math... eh. If you can make change from a $100 bill without a calculator, the sky's the limit in retail. Even if you start your own business, you can hire an accountant for anything more complicated.
Language and writing, well, there's your cornerstone. If you can't master vocabulary, spelling, and grammar in your native tongue, you are screwed. Your future will only be as bright as your back is strong.
Read.
A *lot*.
And if you don't know a word, look it up. The better you are at this, the better your life will be.
