Ham-Fisted!

One of the Labbies shows off his new commuting gas-saving device. Just purchased: Schwinn 500 watt personal scooter. Max speed: 15 mph. Optional woman-repellant detail purchased. However, he passed on the "Nerlinger Package" as redundant.

A few weeks back a friend offered up this can't-refuse invitation:

Hello, ladies & gents...

Lydia and I are planning a Sunday evening dinner on the scale of Labby's lunches. It's a Totally Bad For You menu of Laura's homemade crack & cheese and Lydia's awesome chicken pastries (they are full of cream cheese and other happiness). Lydia will be serving an appetizer of Claritin thanks to Charlotte, her alien cat. We may include a vegetable or two if Todd can make it.

Sunday, March 12, Lydia's Stepford Townhouse, 8pm.

Respondez, s'il vous plait.

And RSVP I did!

You know I'll be there!

And no need for vegetables since any nutrition accidentally attained would be obliterated by the onslaught of delicious heavy dairy products and the wondrous flavor vehicles that are simple carbohydrates.

I shall bring my Intrepid Gastrointestinal Traveler's fedora!

And so I enjoyed visiting the land of Caloria, though my passport was immediately revoked by Intestine Nation. The evening did provide one more little gift the next morning at work...

You see, the Lavoratory (the Laboratory's Lavatory) is a loud place. Not in a talkie or laughy kind of way, but rather in a farty and ker-plunky kind of way. Apparently, there is a little area where one can hang up one's Sense of Shame and Disgust and just let it rip. In the past, a that of self consciousness and a vegetable-soaked colon have left me out-gunned and out-tonned and I could never keep up with what seemed to be natural for the average lab dude. But the right dose of carckeroni-and-cheese and chicken pastry gave me the nutritional and thunderous edge I needed to keep up with the Big Boys. In fact, these gastrointestinal steroids allowed me to match and defeat enemies once unassailable on the scatological field of battle! For a shining moment, victory was mine!

For a shining moment, I was a God.

Imagine a group of forty computer dudes all waiting for a meeting to begin. And I mean hard-core computer lab dudes - paunches, tee-shirts, crappy ass jeans, nerdlinger, geekburglers, all making lab-style IT jokes. So in walks the boss-man with two large bags containing desserts. "Eat up, guys!" he says.

Here's the thing: they were the most girly cupcakes and cookies that have ever existed. I mean they were royally chicked out: the poofy frosting came in three colors: Peeps-style Pink, The Most Pastel Light Blue Yet Imagined, and Freshly-Douched Sundress Yellow. The cupcakes were topped with all the colors of the feminine rainbow with those things that are like sprinkles but all flat and wafery. The cookies (sugar cookies of course with hardened frosting probably a full quarter-inch thick) were topped with the same rainbow colors with those little confectionery sugar beads that I remember as always being tooth-grating hard.

So of course it free and sugary so the boxes are passed around (since they were neither vegetables nor cheese, yours truly abstained) and I got to watch a room of grown men go over security and encryption information while eating bakery goods delivered by Fairies cooked in the dream kitchen of the Girliest Little Girl This Side Of Girlville.

I have to hand it to these South Carolinian evangelists. When they fuck up interpretation of Scripture, they seriously fuck it up. They actually managed to reference Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger in one tight billbaord. Jesus ain't Rambo. Jesus ain't The Terminator. He's a mutant, more powerful combination of both!

Thanks for the pic, Deets.

I used to joke that the uber-geeks here in the lab would load the coveted-but-for-nerdies-only Linux operating system on to their toasters and wristwatches if they could. Well, that wristwatch idea is one step closer to reality thanks to Eurotech and its WWPC (wrist-worn personal computer). This, well, thoroughly unfashionable device is hailed by certain members of Team Lab as "awesome" and "handy". Of course, I used terms like "ultimate", "in" and "dorkiness". But hey, I also though no one would be silly enough to wear those BlueTooth ear cell phone thingies all the time. The funniest part is this:

Eurotech is targeting the indoor-outdoor product at people in potentially hard-core situations such as emergency rescue, security and health care.

Naturally! Because if you can't use an arcane, complicated command line interface during time-sensitive medical emergencies, when can you??

Here are three mistakes I’ve made in the past 3 months, in ascending order of importance.

Mistake #1: Making a nice full pot of coffee in a filter but without the filter basket, resulting in a full pot of coffee going everywhere except the carafe.
The Cost: Nearly a full roll of paper towels, a nice pair of pants, and 45 minutes.
The Lesson: Listen to that little voice inside your head that says things like “Say, that filter basket looks a little different than it usually does…” Investigate a bit further.

Mistake #2: Lending my only Lowe’s Food keychain member card to my roommate “just this one time.” It was never seen again.
The Cost: About three years and 35,000 Reward Points of shopping.
The Lesson: Never, ever lend my roommate things that are:
a) valuable
b) losable

Mistake #3: Choosing to ignore the signs that the starter in my car was going bad, resulting in its death at an inopportune time, namely the company parking lot on a Friday.
The Cost: $85 in towing, $500 in repairs and 3 1/2 blown hours in a rainy, isolated security gate station listening to “modern jazz”.
The Lesson: Entropy: It not called the Second Law of Thermodynamics for nothing, dunderhead!

Yes, I have not updated in a long time and I apologize for the delay. The next post will probably be a proper torching of a very popular item across the country. In that spirit, I found a great article from you-know-where by Nick Schultz that shits on the shittiest invention with laser-like precision and wit. As is customary, a sample:

To understand why hands-free toilet technology stinks, you must first understand three things that any well-designed loo should permit you to do.

1) Clean the pool. You must be able to flush the toilet easily before sitting down, in case any detritus remains from a previous, inconsiderate visitor.

2) Clean the pool, again. You must be able to flush more than once after you are done. Some of us are more prolific than others, and courteous patrons will want to ensure that Point 1 is unnecessary for whomever follows.

3) Issue a courtesy flush. If you plan to settle down with the sports page, you should flush immediately after dropping the kids at the pool. There's no need to let the kids linger any longer than absolutely necessary. This is for the benefit of other visitors.

I respect any author that can so thoroughly trash a modern invention of "convenience".

Directions: In the following question, a related pair of words or phrases is followed by five pairs of words or phrases. Choose the pair that best expresses a relationship similar to that in the original pair

MIDDLE-AGED MEN : MOTORCYCLES ::

a) adolescent girls : horsies
b) gay men : studded, leather codpieces
c) prepubescent boys : Tonka backhoes
d) all of the above
e) Fuck you, ham-fisted faggot! Harleys rule.

HYPER-AGGRESIVE MALE DRIVER : HIS SHAMEFUL, DIMINUTIVE PENIS ::

a) the downtown bag lady : her ceaseless schizophrenia
b) anal roommates : their disastrous toilet training
c) peanut butter : jelly
d) both [a] and [b]
e) this blogger : his need to ridicule others to feel better about himself

Seventh-grade term used: queer. Meaning: general catch-all derisive label for any other boy. Of course, we (or, at least, I) had no idea of it's sexual connotation. Best exemplified by the "game" Smear the Queer. Dispensing with constraints like "rules" or "objects" or "scoring", Smear the Queer consisted of a gang of boys and a football. Whoever has the football became the "queer" and the rest commenced with the smearing. Did I leave anything out?

Seventh-grade term used: Indian giver. Meaning: someone who reneges on giving you something and takes it back. It was not until many years later that I realized what a deep, rich historical inside joke this is! "It's called manifest destiny, Geronimo! And you can look that shit up! In a book! That we wrote! And when we're done, we'll get our children to make cheaters synonymous with, get this, you! How's that for irony, motherfuckers!"

Seventh-grade term used: gay. Meaning: any activity or inanimate object that does not appeal to the sensibilities of a middle school boy. Nothing to do with sexual orientation. Not usually applied to a person (see queer above). Valentine's Day? Gay. Art not involving comics? Gay. Off-brand Izods or Member's Only jackets? Gay. Any school project involving construction paper? Way, way gay. Three-speed bicycles? Gay beyond mention.

You mean that crappy-ass U2 album was the "big winner" at the Grammys last night? What the fuck? That brings How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb's winnings up to eight: five last night, and three last year for the plagerized-riffed, iPod-shilling wreck "Vertigo". I liked U2 in the 80's and early 90s. The Joshua Tree is a great album. How insufferable has Time's-Man-o-The-Year* Bono-led "rock group" become when I'm actually pissed (or care) that the entire entertainment media is feeding the Ego of a once-great band whose music has not mattered in over a dozen years?

Oh, and how much more proof does one need that the Grammys (let's once again pause at the sheer enormity of this statement) is the lowest-rent, lowest-brow of the award shows when Kelly Clarkson holds a statue? "I don't know what is going on but thank you Jesus and God and everyone else who supported my career," Clarkson said on the podium. She paused for a moment. "And fuck you, American Idol," she added, staring at the mouth of an imaginary Gift Horse.

Also, I heard last night that Cheryl Crow had broken it off with Lance Armstrong. Can I assume I'm not the only one who figured a really sweet road bike could now be had for cheap on eBay?

*Giving uber-wealthy Bono and uber-meta-wealthy Bill Gates Man-o-The-Year awards for "humanitarianism" solidifies Time Magazine as a meaningless rag like, say, People or Us.

A couple nights ago, a friend and I went to the parking lot of a newly opening Chik-Fil-A near my apartment. It was 11pm and the joint would not open until 6am the next morning. But there were about 200 people there in all manner of tents, camping gear, coolers and tailgate equipment. Why? Because this Chik-Fil-A was giving away free Chick-Fil-A for a year [consisting of one Combo a week for 52 weeks] to the first 100 people in line at 6am! You may has well have told all the college students, homeless people, schizophrenics, and the insomniac unemployed to c'mon down for a shindig! It was a grand swath of Absurd Village: regular tailgaters lamely attempting to hide their drinks and pot, a representative aggregation of a Durham street gang, the representative and not coincidentally well-groomed aggregation of Chik-Fil-A marketers, and the unidentifiable. All of whom were not dancing or responding to a surprisingly loud DJ until, of course, he announced that Nuggets were on the way and to please not rush the main tent.

A highlight: a man singing Nickelback karaoke who balls were only matched by his tone-deafness. Guess who was pining for a tape recorder.

The pics:

Dear Hollywood,

Visual effects are your bag. Your state-of-the-art computer graphics give us smooth looking 40-foot chest-thumping apes. You have been pulling off excellent bullet exit wounds since the 70's and can always make your stars look great. Why then, I'm just wondering, is your old/fat makeup look so, well, fake? Is it because, as Hollywood, you have no frame of reference and just don't know what a fat or an old person looks like? Was all the visual effects R and D budget used up on outer space, demons, and natural disasters?

Why, Hollywood, does old/fat makeup suck so? To wit:




Emma Thompson in Nanny McPhee: One step above high-school theater makeup.








No, Hollywood, we can't tell this is Martin Lawrence in a fat suit. No suspension of disbelief needed here.












Oh come on now. No fat person looks like this.






Please rectify or at least explain.

Mind-boggled,
Ham-Fisted!

Thanks to Casper who reminded me of the worst candy abomination of all time - one so terrible I honestly believe I was repressing its memory from the taste-bud and gastrointestinal abuse I suffered at its hands. And now the undisputed leader of bile-flavored "candy" masquerading as confectionaries for children:


Appealing to a 7-year-old because: Evil candy-maker Farley's markets this atrocity with a comfort-food style name: What could be more pleasing than peanut-shaped candy associated with the family fun of a circus? They just don't bother to mention the "circus" in question is the one displaying John Merrick in The Elephant Man.

Fatal Flaw: Setting aside the abjectly atrocious taste, Circus Peanuts are (and pause for a moment to consider the enormity of this statement) the most vilely processed artificial foods ever to be dumped on unsuspecting youth. It tastes like it was concocted in Beelzebub's own laboratory with only the most exacting standards for horrific taste and texture. Perfecting the grittiness of mudcakes and the mealiness of hyper-overcooked shrimp, Farley's unleashed its irony-laden, vomit-spewing assault on the world's sugar-starved elementary schoolchildren.

Rank, in ascending order, of the crappiest candy as cataloged by Ham-Fisted! as a 7-year-old:

My coworker Jeff recently informed me that he had bought a new table saw, wood and all manner of new tools for some woodworking projects. What kind of woodworking projects? "I really want to build some stands for my speakers," he said. "Because right now they are so big they just sit on the boxes they came in."

"But first," he added, "I'm going to build a new wood case for the subwoofer in my truck."

Needless to say, Jeff is not married. Indeed, I told him, that was about the most bachelor-laden projects in woodworking ever. That gave me a great idea to pitch to Home and Garden Network: a show about woodworking completely unencumbered/watered-down by female influence! Some possible titles:


And each week, Jeff could embark on a new dude-themed wood building project, like building a wooden stock-car model bed for his dogs! Or a custom built wooden holding unit for his XBox! In fact, the show could be pitch with a perfect formula:

• This week, Jeff builds a [NFL franchise]-themed [shelving] in his [bedroom] for his [porn collection]!
• This week, Jeff builds a [poker playin']-themed [storage box] in his [bathroom] for his[mega-strero]!
• This week, Jeff builds a [Dukes of Hazzard]-themed [wooden stand] in his [living room] for his [keg]!
• This week, Jeff builds a [Robot]-themed [display case] in his [kitchen] for his [ferrets]!
• This week, Jeff builds a [Kitschy 80s glam rock band]-themed [wood drawer] in his [home-bar] for his [bong]!
  
  
  I understand there is another do-it-yourself channel (uninspiredly called the DIY Network). Let the bidding war begin!
  

This is a gift. Yet another in a long line of chronically overrated, Caucasian Duke basketball media darlings, J.J. Redick has given us a big old present of poetry. You read correctly. Poetry. Published on Sports Illustrated.com. Hand selected. By J.J. Redick. Let's set the tone with some def jams, J.J.-style:

As I decide to fulfill my life's strategy
The devil insists on trying to battle me
I meet him in an empty field on the high plains
He throws temptations my way to inflict internal pain
Life and death matters, this ain't no game
It's mind over matter, the power of my brain
He thinks I'll give in if my muscles start to strain
He believes I'll submit to the evil of society's frame
And benefit from notoriety's gain
He says I don't have to properly train
and that he'll give me all the fame
and everyone will know my name
But I think he's insane

And on it goes. Fish in a barrel? Yes. But I can't help myself. Let's begin.

No bandage can cover my scars
Nor your ego, apparently.
It's hard living a life behind invisible bars
A prison of the mental, rather than the material? Wow, I never though about that until I was in the 9th grade.
Searching for the face of God
I'm only inspired by the poems of Nas
Striving to see God only inspired by the lyrical poet of "Dr. Knockboot" must be difficult.
Because the truth has carved my life's patterns
The reality of pain, and the joy of laughter
Pain is real? In my life, nothing is more unreal than pain.
My hopes and dreams shattered
by the miscalculation of my own situation
Hey, it's a new rap fake-mia culpa: I don't make mistakes/I only miscalculate
It's difficult to keep my nerves patient
Have patience, nerves. Your time to freak out is coming.
Facing the forecast of fears
that none of my peers have ever been faced with
Yes, JJ. Young men throughout the ages have never, ever faced premonitions of doom as hard and long as you have. Impoverished? Handicapped? War-ravaged? That's nothing compared to pleasing the infernal expectations of one Mr. Dick Vitale. Oh, and you used "faced" twice there, chief. It's called a "thesaurus".

My favorite snippets:

It's difficult to fathom the coming of the rapture
What if I awoke in an empty pasture?
I really can't fathom the rapture either, but waking up in an empty pasture seems like a good deal next to, say, sentient hoards of flying jagged tin can lids soaked in acid.

These words describe the soundtrack to my life's song
My mind and body united like the Colors of Benneton
Trifecta! Terrible rhyme, hopeless cliche, all wrapped up in a couplet written by a thirteen-year-old girl circa 1991!

While dining on his usual breakfast fare of pancake-and-bacon-flavored maple syrup*, my labmate Labby and I got to talking about (what else?) food. It turns out that I got a recipe that could only be forged and worked in the family that produced ol' Labby**. It is called:

"Corn! Corn! Corn!"

Instructions: Bake a sheet of southern style cornbread. Place sheet into an even larger pan (yes, there will be a "dippin' runover" when we're through.) Place lightly cooked corned beef hash over the sheet of cornbread. (Editor's note: what a brilliant move here. Do not cook the corned beef too well, since when the Corn! Corn! Corn! is baked further the porous cornbread will collect the corned beef drippin's). Then take your most creamy creamed corn recipe (Labby recommends: mix frozen corn, whipping cream, flour, salt and, of course, butter) and spread generously over the entire cornbread-corned beef mixture.

Then bake the whole goddamn thing. Optional: serve with sides of plain cornbread as there will be plenty of dippin' by-product.

Dessert: candy corn I suppose.

Though Corn! Corn! Corn! is the best name (the exclamation points were, not surprisingly, my addition) I did think of a few others:

Starchward Ho!
Corn-o'-copia!
Cornplosion!
By God, it's Full of Starch!
Cornothogy!
Dante's Three Levels of Corn!
Maize! Maize! Maize!

* A very typical Labby breakfast consists of the following: one large pancake and four large containers of maple syrup. This seemed to be too much, even if one supersaturated*** the entire pancake. I asked Labby what the extra syrup was for. "For the bacon," he explained. Of course! I thought. For the side of bacon!

**Remember, this is the man who got the following as a "vegetable plate" at the cafeteria to "eat light" one day: baked potato with sour cream, rice with gravy, corn. And the vegetable plate comes with a roll. I called it "Starchfest 2005" and "Labby's Fuck You Vegetables! Tour" but that did not seem to go over too well.

***Supersaturation is a kind of neat chemical property: "The term supersaturation refers to a solution that contains more of the dissolved material than could be dissolved by the solvent under normal circumstances, e. g. increased heat or pressure."

I invented a new dance this past holiday season: The Self-Conscious! The Self-Conscious has no moves per se; rather, it's a collection dance tips that I found useful along the lines of "Dance like there's no one watching you" or "Relax and feel the beat". Without further adieu, here are the steps to do The Self-Conscious:

1. Work yourself into a persistent, all-encompassing state of awkwardness and embarrassment.

2. Imagine you are dancing alone on a stage in a spotlight where the sole audience members consist of: your harshest critic, the sexiest and most stylish person you know, Mike Wallace, Subway Jared, the reincarnated corpses of Adolf Hitler and Fred Astaire, your boss' boss' boss and The Virgin Mary. They are all furiously scribbling notes for their collaborative critique, tentatively titled Your Dancing: Anatomy of Complete Social Status Collapse.

3. Construct an imaginary Jumbotron which constantly plays slow-motion replays of your finest dope moves, much to the comic delight of the dance floor denizens and the wider television-viewing audience of all the people who you suspect don't like you.

4. Dance! Dance! Dance!

We restaurant water-drinkers know the deal: You order up some food at Boston Market or its ilk and the cashier asks you if you want a drink. You say you'll just have water and he either tells you "water cups are by the fountains" or gives you the tiniest, cheapest frail little clear plastic cup that must hold a grand total of four fluid ounces. It's their little way of saying "fuck you, you free beverage drinker." So then punishment is meted out by your constant distraction of having to get up for a refill or just suffering through the thirst. Woe be to you if you get ice: use your swallow-and-a-half wisely my friend.

Well Panera Bread has upped the ante of contempt a notch. You see, the good people at Panera put their logo on their 4-oz water cups.. "Say, you know those tiny, pee-wee cups we give to the water assholes? You know, the wee cups that would quench the thirst of no man? Let's pay a lot extra to stick our corporate logo on them." Yes, apparently it's not the money that makes these restaurants dole out the dwarf-cups. It's simple hate an the desire to see us shamed next to the 20oz. cash-beverage-cup population.

But I did find a flaw in Panera's plan: they had these cups in a large stack by the drinks. So anytime you see someone at Panera's with a nice manderin-orange salad and 11 Lilliputian Panera cups filled with water arranged on a tray, please whisper, "I'm with you brother."

I know, I know. Half my posts seem to tout Slate articles. But it's just not that often that articles make a well-argued salaient point and make me laugh out loud at work. Josh' Levins essay about why every single decent white basketball payer is, and will continue to be, compared to Larry Bird is one of those.

Levins is writing about the current Basketball Cracker of the Year, Gonzaga's Adam Morrison:

The allure of the Bird comparison is that many of the qualities that made him great...his court vision, his anticipation, his leadership are stereotypes associated with white basketball virtue. Take a look at these tidbits from Morrison's nbadraft.net scouting report: "Old school right down to the stripes on the socks ... Like a coach on the floor ... Great intangibles, competes and inspires others to play hard ... Fundamentally solid, does all the little things to help his team win ... Sees the floor well, and is creative finding teammates for baskets ... Runs decent, but needs a head of steam." Let's run that through the racial translator: "[White] right down to the [white] on the [white] ... Like a [white] on the [white] ... [White, white] and [white] ... [White], and is [white] ... [White], but [he's really slow and also he's white]."

Oh, and the article uses one of those great words that needed to be created: the crustache.

Thank you, Alterna-Chick Working as a Bread Slinger Amid Mall-Shoppy Orgy.

It was refreshing to see this little homemade protest on a nice employee at Panera Bread. (click to enlarge)

This season has been the strangest politicization of Christmas yet, with the not-politiaclly-insignifigant American Family Association's completely ridiculous boycott of Target since they use "Happy Holidays" signs in ads rather than "Merry Christmas". Yes, you read this correctly. Worse, Target caved and released a statement essentially saying while they never had a "ban" on Christmas they would try to be less inclusive next year. I guess they will pander completely to people who for some reason are outraged that a retailer would say "Happy Holidays". Jews, take your gnome gold back to Zurich! Muslims, take your turbans and explode yourself in Mecca! Agnostics, prepare to feel the burn!

I saw this driving down a local highway...

I feel better when someone else feels exactly like I do. And is a good writer. Hua Hsu obliterates the Black Eyed Peas' "My Humps" the way it deserves. I also feel that this song is as abjectly shitty as it is hugely popular. Hsu writes:

"What you gon' do with all that ass/ All that ass inside them jeans? What you gon' do wit all that breast?/ All that breast inside that shirt?" rapper Will.I.Am teases in response, rendering literal what had heretofore been pretty much literal. It's a song that tries to evoke a coquettish nudge and wink, but head-butts and bloodies the target instead. It isolates sectors of the female anatomy that obsessive young men have been inventing language for since their skulls fused, and yet it emerges only with "humps" and "lumps".

Nice article. In case you haven't notice, Slate is my very favorite website. Thanks to Casper for turning me on to it.

I do enjoy a Chick-Fil-A sandwich. And I kinda like the fact they close on Sundays, because, hell, it's probably the only break those poor wafflefry-friers get. But seeing the promotion for their new 2006 Calendar "Tiz Nobler to Eat Mor Chikin" was a reminder that:

a) The "Eat Mor Chikin" campaign is the most quietly-disturbing ad campaign I've ever seen and

b) It must be wildly successful since it's been going on for years and years.

In essence, the ads are centered around an animal that is regularly slaughtered promoting the slaughter of another animal in order, presumably, to curb the number of its own dead. And this being an ad, the cows promote their views in zany, wacky, hilarious ways! Check it out! The cows are the Knights of the Round Table! Or look at this delicious piece of madcap promotional press:

ATLANTA (Nov. 3, 2004) Moo!ve over 007! Atlanta-based restaurant chain Chick-fil-A® has just released the eighth edition of its immensely popular, cow-themed calendar, and for 2005, the chain's unpredictable Eat Mor Chikin® Cows have created a spy-themed calendar portraying Secret Agent Cows in a year worth of outlandish action scenes!

Oh yes! Don't kill us cows! We're unpredictable! Outlandish, even! Slaughter the chickens! Or "chikinz" to us because we use hilarious cow-spelling! And don't forget:


What will those crazy cows think of next? Cow plush-toys for the kiddies during the holidays?

Travelling through an exceptionally long commute this morning, I was listening to NPR which had a "top news" story (one that is repeated every half hour) that caught my attention. Apparently, a nationally known hurricane expert (Dr. Gray) from Colorado State University has come out with his 2006 hurricane predictions! Yes, according to this crack team of reseachers, we can anticiate 17 named storms in 2006, nine of which will become hurricanes and an 80% chance that one will hit the US mainland. Fine. Fair enough.

Except if one reads the AP report this news is based on, one sees, in the middle of the article, a teesy-weensy, tiny little insignificant detail:

In December 2004, Gray predicted 2005 would see 11 named storms with six becoming hurricanes. His forecast said three hurricanes would be major storms with sustained winds of at least 111 mph, and a 69 percent chance of at least one striking the U.S. mainland.

In fact, 2005 saw 26 named storms, 14 of which were hurricanes. Hey, he was only off by 136% and 133% respectively. If one assumes that margin of error greater and half the margin lesser, (since it is impossible we will have zero hurricanes) we can now safely predict for the 2006 season:

From 10 to 40 named storms, anywhere between 5 and 21 of which will become hurricanes. Thanks Dr. Gray!

I thought this system could use a challenge like the "experienced expert pro football prognosticators" have. That is, put their predictions up against their grandmothers who pick teams purely based on the prettiness of the uniform colors.

So, Dr. Gray, I have volunteered my cat and world-renowned meteorologist, Party Pants, to come up with a rival 2006 hurricane prediction. I don't know exactly how he does it, but I hear it involves shiny moving lights, pirouette jumps and his litterbox.

For those of you who enjoy a well-written and scathing movie review, Grady Hendrix has an excellent one on Slate. He takes on the "Left Behind" movie series - an admittedly easy target, but he has a fresh view on it. Plus it's damn funny. Here's just a snippet:

In low-budget movies there are just some things that you can't portray convincingly. The end of the world is one of them, and the spinning wheels of geopolitics is another. In Left Behind: World at War, the world is never depicted at war, but we do get a brief snowmobile battle.

If interested, the full review is here.

Hard time at work, so here's one from the vault not on the blog:

There is a guy named Doug who works with me and I heard the funniest/saddest story about him. First to set this up, Doug is a consummate mid-thirties nerdlinger. The slumped posture, the bug eyes, the frequently incomprehensible techno-babble. Not to mention the uber-geek devices sloppily placed as robustly devoid-of-fashion accessories around the belt and neck. Very nice man, though.

Anyway, Doug is married to a woman who has children from a previous marriage. The eldest daughter is 15 and apparently a hell raiser. Scummy boyfriends, tantrums, the works. She spends a lot of time online doing bad things (details not necessary) so the mother demands she give up her password. She refuses to divulge it in a huff so her computer is locked down since it is password protected at the login.

Well, Doug steps into the fray and says he can crack the password (which he can of course, it is computer related.) He sequesters the computer and runs a hacking utility that's a "brute force" hack. That is, it cracks the password by running an algorithm that takes anywhere from hours to days to break. So he sets up the crack program, gets it running and goes to bed. In the middle of the night he hears the program make a triumphant noise announcing that it had cracked the password. He gets out of bed, hits return at the prompt and sees the following:

The password is: "dougisstupid"

Oh Dougie-babie! We love you. Is there a word for this perfect picture of hilarity along with heartfelt, honest pity?

A caveat before busting on NPR: I like NPR. I listen to it all the time. I feel the need to say that since NPR has really taken it up the ass recently from both the Left and the Right. Think of it as light constructive criticism. Mean light constructive criticism.



I'm talking directly at you, Michele Norris of All Things Considered. Ooops, check that! I meant MEEEEE-shel Norris. Do you honestly ever wonder why NPR gets a bad rap as the liberal elite? Well, let's just say you're not helping the cause, MEEEE-shel. I don't care what flimsy excuses you have for this highfalutin pronunciation (it's from a long tradition of the Norris family...dating back...generation...blah...and so on....), it's time to conform. MEEEE-shel, you mock the Allysons, Caitlynns, and Mari-with-an-i's of the world since they had no choice. You do, Michele.




If you are like me and listen to NPR on the way to work, then you know these two themes intimately, especially since they have not changed in approximately 20 years. You know what I'm talking about:


For a long time, it was a comfortable balance. Reassuring mediocrity on the drive to and from work. But a few years ago, the shows started a brinksmanship campaign to reinvent their respective themes in unique, unusual, and, quite frankly, unworkable genres. It was "Forest Guitar" as smooth jazz quartet versus full-on symphonic "Strange Anthem". Then it was ridiculous muted-trumpet "Sunny Tune" versus incredibly pompous solo-harp rendition of "Royal Hippos". I then listened to the bloodshed in awe as I heard and way-overproduced electronoica arrangement of Morning Edition's theme versus the head-shaking, gawd-awful cover of All Things Considered theme by an overeager power rock trio. Enough you two! Stop with this silly battle! Because in this war, no one wins. Especially the listening civilians.




Don't worry, Heather Payton of the BBC, I will never look at your picture! We will always continue our mad, torrid love affair in my dreams!!


The Diane Rhem Show is a though-provoking talk show with excellent guests, fascinating conversation, and a wide variety of topics, all hosted by a woman who sounds every bit of 114 years old.



I have it on good authority that I am not the only person who can't listen to the entire hour and not imagine what inane banter ensues while you two are screwing.


The weekends on WUNC are full of classic shows like Marketplace and This American Life. It is also the home of several regional sub-genre music shows. Let's give them a shot!

Thistle & Shamrock sounds like it would be good. Authentic Irish folk/pub songs picked by the wonderfully voiced and named Fiona Richie. Fiona sets up the hour in her wonderfully true Irish accent and the music starts playing. And therin lies the problem. I defy you, defy you, to listen to the first five minutes of this stuff, shut off the radio, read the newspaper for a time, turn the radio back on five minutes before the hour, look me dead in the eye and swear the currently playing Irish folk song is not the exact same goddam Irish folk song that was playing 50 minutes ago.

Still, Fiona Richie, please email me when you're in town.

Thistle & Shamrock has nothing on Back Porch Music however. I know what the producers of Back Porch Music are thinking. It's hip and cool to listen to real bluegrass and folk music. And it is, occasionally. But not for three hours a night from 9pm to midnight Friday, Saturday and Sunday! We simply do not need nine solid weekly prime-frickin'-time hours of bluegrass. Dammit.

We won't say much about A Cappella Hour. Imagine the hell of one no-break hour of barbershop quartet music. Tune in and imagine no more.

I love me some Morgan Freeman. Ever since I saw him as the vocabulary-spewing token minority on the mid-Seventies Children's Television Network series Electric Company I have always wanted to have a Morgan Freeman in my life. Does he not represent the Platonic archetype of the old, wisdom-spewing retired front-end bagger at Kroger who makes you smile at your membership in the crazy club called humanity? Who wouldn't want Morgan Freeman to be the wizened old retired widower/neighbor who serves you awesome down-home-Southern pecan pie while spewing shockingly prescient advice regarding your unrequited love for future soulmates? Or perhaps the old, wizened adage-spewing janitor at your office building who, through his many dignified, noble life ruminations, you come to respect; nay, even more, love?

Morgan Freeman's ascension into Hollywood demigod pantheon was a little unexpected. It follows a formula; formulas are certainly nothing new in Hollywood, but I think Morgan's is unique. He is, quite literally, the anti-method actor. He is the meta-character actor. While stars like Jack Nicholson and Dustin Hoffman successfully infuse part of their own personality into every role they play, Morgan Freeman ejaculates his entire essence into the part and by sheer force of will converts every personality detail on the written page into himself. Morgan Freeman does not become a character; the character becomes Morgan Freeman. And while scripting roles for specific actors is commonplace, it's taken to a whole new level with Morgan. When Clint Eastwood was cobbling Million Dollar Baby, Morgan Freeman was in the script as the old, amiable, wisdom-spewing boxing-is-my-life-see?-that's-why-I-literally-live-at-the-gym trainer. Did that character have a name? I don't remember. I think it was Morgan Freeman.

Speaking of character names, can anyone name the actual scripted name for these pure-Morgan-essence roles?:

• The old, wisdom-spewing, racially-asute tolerant chauffeur foil of said Miss Daisy in Driving Miss Daisy?
• The old, wizened, Dante-spewing, about-to-retire-in-two-weeks, seen-it-all, hardened-yet-grandfatherly detective/Brad Pitt father figure in Seven?
• The old, gumption-spewing, pure-heart-o'-gold, fawning convict/friend of Andy Dufrains in Shawshank Rendemption?
• The old, sagely, acumen-spewing, uplifting-speech-giving, black-version-of-FDR-like president/humanity patriarch in Deep Impact?
• The old, crusty, common-sense-spewing, noble, loyal pure-plot-device-murdered-buddy of Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven?

All of these character names are, I submit, Morgan Freeman. You know how some movies and television shows save the very last opening cast credit to say an actors name with the character they will be portraying? Lke, for instance, "And Patrick Stewart as Mr. Phineas" or "And Peter O' Toole as Old Man McGuillicutty" or "And Morgan Fairchild as Alexia". I hereby submit that every opening credits sequence for films containing Morgan Freeman should have the following: