parking_god's Reserved Space
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2001-04-30
This Is What Happens When Your Voicemail System Runs On A See-N-Say
Spoiler: "To hear a duck quack, press 7." And it does! AFLAC is said to be considering legal action, contending that NDB is infringing on their Duck commercial. Of course, I'm the only one who's saying that. 2001-04-29
We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Blog... I'll be doing this periodically (read: when I can't think of anything worth blogging), because I've got a lot of stuff to add. Whether any of it is any good will be an exercise for the reader. Most of it will go here, although some will find its way here. Stay tuned. 2001-04-28
The Winning Throw Went So Far That Some Neck In Barstow Reported Seeing A UFO I've been playing disc golf on and off for about five years now, although in the past couple of years I've kind of turned away from it in favor of roller hockey, which I also play very poorly but with great enthusiasm. Anyway, I'm still subscribed to Rick Bay's excellent Disc Golf Online newsletter (subscribe here). The current issue's cover story is Big D In The Desert II, a long drive competition. Did you know that there are a handful of people on the planet that can chuck a golf disc (like a frisbee, but heavier, 'thinner,' and smaller in diameter) over 700 feet? I've actually met one of them (Scott Stokely), although he wasn't throwing that day. It boggles my mind to know that these guys can throw three times as far as I can. Germany's Christian Voigt set a new world's record with a throw of 217.05 meters (about 711 feet). Now this is my idea of a "wrongful serving" settlement: biztravel.com's Joe Brancatelli reports in his April 26 column that a vegetarian passenger sued Indian airline Jet Airways after finding a chicken bone in what, he was assured, was a vegetarian meal. After a two-year court battle, the passenger successfully proved he had "suffered intense mental anguish," and was awarded... $215. Contrast that with this case, where the vege-frickin-tarian plaintiffs sought (unsuccessfully) $2100 from Taco Bell to pay for a trip to India for "purification" after inadvertently being served meat. Putting aside for a moment how a religion can have the concept of having to atone for an accidental sin, the moral here seems to be this: if you're a herbivore, being served meat by accident is considered to be worth somewhere between $215 and $2100 in damages. 2001-04-27
Sub Captain Formally Apologizes, Commits Ritual Suicide; Hailed In Japan As Hero Commander Scott Waddle, captain of the USS Greeneville, arrived in Uwajima, Japan, today and formally apologized to the family of Toshimichi Furuya, one of nine people killed when the Greeneville rammed and sank the Ehime Maru on February 9. After Waddle made a few brief remarks, Shizuko Kimura, sister of Furuya, presented Waddle and executive officer Lieutenant Commander Gerald Pfeifer with a matched set of traditional Japanese swords. Then, in a gruesome but poignant ceremony, Waddle knelt before a Shinto shrine in the family's living room and commited seppuku with the wakizashi while Pfeifer stood second with the katana, prepared to decapitate Waddle if he risked dishonoring himself by crying out. After mopping up the copious amount of blood and spilled entrails, Kimura said that Waddle has "atoned for the great shame of murdering my brother" and brought honor to his family and crew. A high-level Pentagon spokesman says that President Bush is "satisfied" with the outcome and considers the matter closed. OK, I made that all up, but I'm surprised The Onion hasn't come up with something like it yet. Except better, since they're way way funnier than I am. 2001-04-24
If You See Any Suspicious-Looking Unattended Bovines, Call Your Local Bomb Squad And The BATF Normally, when I hear "exploding cows", I think "flatulence" (kosher version). Or maybe "nuclear-powered air compressors". But check out this description of how a human contracted foot-and-mouth disease. The guy's faring far better than I would be, given the circumstances--I'm sure I'd have started puking and not stopped until I died of dehydration. I forgot to mention that yesterday was a comparatively slow day for man-made disasters; the most notable was the L'Ambiance tragedy, where a partially-completed apartment complex collapsed in 1987, killing 28 construction workers in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Sorry--that's 28 union construction workers killed. On the other hand, I think I may leave the chronicling of disasters to the professionals. 2001-04-23
If This Is The "Pearl Harbor of the Culture War," Then I Wanna Fly A Zero! [But for this article,] I might never have known that games like Atari Combat, Wizardry, and Dungeons and Dragons that I played as a kid had changed me into the mentally unbalanced serial killer that I am today. Of Course, Coming Off A 1-10 Season, Losing The TV Deal Isn't Much Of A Revenue Hit Division I-AA Prairie View A&M has the dubious distinction of having one of the longest losing streaks in NCAA football history: 80 games from 1989 to 1998. They finally got the monkey off their back--although by that point, the monkey was probably a gorilla--by beating Langston (just a guy named Langston, not the whole team) in 1998. Now we find out it was all tainted: the NCAA placed PVA&M on one year's probation for bad timing. The probation includes no TV or postseason appearances, but no loss of scholarships. I can't decide whether this constitutes regulatory overkill (kicking a team when it's down) or the most incompetent coaching staff ever (they cheated and still couldn't win more than one game). On the other hand, this isn't the first time the school's run afoul of the powers that be (maybe they ought to suit up the band--at least they have some fight!). 2001-04-21
Now At amazon.com: Jihad For Dummies Looking for just the right book to complete your Jihad Studies degree (with a minor in Destroying The Infidels)? The Smoking Gun has what you need: "Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants". It shows the typical 42-gazillion ways to kill someone, using everything from crap to castor beans. And if you're running into trouble getting the information you need from your captives, have no fear! Tried and true methods in the physical torture section will get you the President's travel schedule faster than you can say "Allah u-akhbar!" The textbook is a little weak as far as psychological torture goes (I mean, "Using harsh treatment, insults, and curses to defeat his morale?" C'mon! I get worse than that at the office on a daily basis!), but who ever accused the mujahadeen of being subtle? Thanks to Cruel Site Of The Day. 2001-04-20
It'll All Be Good As Long As I Don't Hear Suicide Solution I was on the treadmill this morning when CNN aired their story on the fires in Florida. At the exact moment when the newsreader said "..and one home and is believed to be the work of an arsonist" (quote approximate; I was too busy trying to suck oxygen into my dying body to hear it properly), Burning Down The House started playing on my walkman (not built by Sony, so no trademark or capitalization and go blow if you don't like it). This happens to me every now and then. For instance, I read Cryptonomicon last summer, and for three days in a row I read something in the book very close to something that happened in real life later that day. The one that I remember most is the scene where the Japanese soldiers wash ashore on the island, and one of the soldiers is bitten by a sea snake and dies in a matter of seconds. That night's Survivor showed Richard playing with a sea snake. Eesh! 2001-04-19
The Definition Of 'Disaster' Is Culturally Relative On the basis of Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Exxon Valdez, I came to the conclusion that April is historically a bad month for man-made disasters. I need to modify that somewhat--it appears that if you look deeply enough into history, it's always a bad month for disasters. I didn't have to look too far today, though. On this day...
But if you shift your perspective to the other side of the road and the other side of the Atlantic, you get today's biggest disaster: The Shot Heard 'Round The World. 2001-04-17
Let McVeigh Die, But Save The Cows! In a particularly egregious case of sticking their noses where they don't belong, PETA sent a letter to Harley Lappin, warden of the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute where Timothy McVeigh is scheduled to get The Needle next month, asking that McVeigh's last meal be vegetarian. I'm pretty sure their request was rejected on Constitutional grounds. Failing that, PETA appealed to McVeigh personally to request a vegetarian meal. His response is far more charitable than mine would have been, were I in his shoes: "I'm kind of preoccupied right now, what with my impending death and all, but look at it like this: I offed over 160 people. What makes you think I give a flying fsck about animals?". Then I'd order a panda steak (seasoned with powdered bear's gallbladder) with extra dolphin sauce and a bowl of spotted owl's nest soup. Thanks to pure (watermelon) sugar for the ref. I have always said that vegetarianism (or whatever the PC term is today; I don't keep up because I don't care) is a religion based on guilt, and that it's the closest thing to animal worship extant in the First World. 2001-04-16
At The Tone, The Time Will Be... 5:00. Except In Indiana, Where It Will Be 1927. One of the (countless) things that embarrasses me about living in Indiana is the fact that we can't get the hang of this daylight savings time thing. Y'see (for those of you who live in the 47 other states that understand 'spring ahead fall back' as something other than a line dance step), most of Indiana observes Eastern Standard Time year-round. The practical effect is that in the spring and summer, we observe the same time as Chicago; in the fall and winter, the same time as Detroit. What this also means is that the rest of the country is never exactly sure what time it is here. At best, it's tedious, like whenever I make plans to visit my family in Michigan or vice versa and have to remind them whether we're on the same time or an hour behind; at worst, it can cost Big Money. It would be comical if it didn't reinforce the stereotypical image of Hoosiers as backwards-assed country fscks, but it happens the same way every year--a big push goes on at the beginning of the legislative season, where this by God is the year we're going to finally do it, and then the next thing you know, the Indiana Farm Bureau bitches about how the farmers can't cope with it, and the initiative vanishes without a trace. Of course, there are folks who think the entire DST thing is a crock and we should all go back to 'normal' time anyway. In a twist, some think that God set the clocks and we should leave well enough alone [these people think of evolution as a Communist Satanic plot, so don't even get me started here]. Wow, that's a lot of venting over something so trivial as what time zone we're in. I wonder what'll happen when I decide to comment on something meaningful? 2001-04-15
When The Call Comes To Ascend, Will You Answer Your Chakraphone? The Spiritual School of Ascension is a typical bunch of New Age nut jobs, with a twist (at least from my perspective): I am 99 44/100% certain that "Oa" (nee "Rama" nee "Tom Weber") was a co-worker of mine here at the Imperialist Capitalist Running Pig-Dog Military-Industrial Complex from about 1992 through 1997. During that time, he was one of the most stable and rational people I've known. I wonder what happened. There is much speculation among the people who work there who knew him that "Mila" must have seductive powers from... Elsewhere... I nominated the SSA to Temple ov thee Lemur as a potential Cult ov thee Week. "I'm sorry for the way things are in China . . .." I can honestly say I never thought I'd headline a post with a John Denver lyric. Ever since his unfortunate demise, I can't listen to one of his songs without mutating the lyrics: "Grandma's feather bed" becomes "Pacific ocean bed", "Rocky Mountain High" becomes "Gas tank runnin' dry", that kind of thing. For the right price, you can hear his voice from beyond, if that's what you're into. But I digress. The point behind today's headline is that we didn't get the apology right in the EP-3 hijacking. Here's the apology I would have written: Dear Comrades, We're sorry your pilot was such an idiot. We're sorry that we let him hide his little fighter under our great big aircraft. We're sorry he squished himself like a bug trying to force our aircraft down on Hainan. We're sorry you didn't let us help you find him. We're sorry that nobody else in the world recognizes your claim to territoriality over the entire South China Sea. We're sorry you can't control your electronic emissions sufficiently to prevent an aircraft in international airspace from picking them up. And finally, we apologize in advance for the damage we're about to do to your runway to make it unnecessary for you to dispose of the aircraft. Sincerely, Dubya. 2001-04-10
Mrs. Wang, The Peoples' Liberation Army Air Force Regrets To Inform You That Your Husband Is Missing Because He Was Stupid ...specifically, because he played Chicken with an aircraft several times the size of his own. It's bad enough that the Chinese fighters were trying to steal the EP-3 by herding it into Chinese airspace, but then to claim that the EP-3 caused the accident and the U.S. is therefore to blame? C'mon--if you want the technology onboard that aircraft (and you do, Comrade, you do), get it the same way everybody else does--buy it from a turncoat in the U.S. Government! By the way, did you know that China claims ALL the South China Sea outside the 12-mile limit of bordering countries as its territorial waters? Check a map, and you'll see just how absurd that claim is. Klingon Rules Of Succession In Action: On this date two years ago, the president of Niger was assassinated by members of his own guard. Taking power was a junta led by... wait for it... the commander of the presidential guards! Disaster Month continues here in the Reserved Space: on this date in 1963, USS Thresher sank in the Atlantic off Boston, killing all 129 crewmembers. In 1991, an Italian ferry in the Mediterranean Sea collided with a tanker and sank, killing 151. 2001-04-09
All Your Marketing Scheme Are Belong To Us! The All Your Base meme grabbed me as hard as anybody, and I was worried that some lame-ass ad-man would hijack it into this year's "Whazzup!" Have no fear! All Your Brand is looking out for us. And speaking of which, what happens when you mix rating sites like hotornot.com or bangable.com with AYB? See for yourself! This one is my favorite. Today in history: General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederate army to General U.S. Grant on this date in 1865. I'd always considered Lee a traitor for going over to the Rebels during the War Against Southern Secession, but his words in the days that followed were largely responsible for both sides reconciling and not becoming, say, the Balkans (Yeah, I read that in Parade. So sue me). Of course, not everyone is happy with this. 2001-04-07
Hey, Little Girl, Want A Piece Of Candy? Cincinnati (and I can never remember how many 'n's, how many 't's, and where they go) is learning what happens when you teach economics and sex ed on the same day. I remember my fifth- and sixth-grade days, desparately trying--and failing--to 'get a girl' (not that I'd have had the slightest idea what to do afterwards). Why didn't I think of bribery? Evidently "keeping up with the Joneses" is not a uniquely WASP-American concept. Thanks to FriezLog for the ref. 2001-04-04
It Was President Clinton, On The Mountain, With The Airplane... Or was it the Green Berets, on the airplane, with the pistol? Or was it Chinese Intelligence, at 35,000 feet, with a thermite bomb? Step right up and offer your theory in this high-stakes game of Clue, with former Commerce Secretary Ron Brown playing the role of Mr. Boddy. Five years ago yesterday, the VIP aircraft carrying Brown and 34 others crashed into a mountainside near Dubrovnik, Croatia, and all 35 ended up dead. Note that I didn't say the crash killed them all; that's because there's some dispute over exactly what transpired, and why. I have one version on my own web site; there's another that goes several steps beyond those claims, and yet another that blames the Chinese! 2001-04-03
2001.04.02 Dammit, Swabbie, I Said TanquerAY On The Rocks! Remark Of The Day, courtesy of P.J. O'Rourke, on forbes.com's FYI: "Prepubescent girls are in command of such large amounts of discretionary spending that the introduction of a popular new boy band can cause the Fed to raise rates in an attempt to curb demand-side inflation." 2001.04.01 When You're Sufficiently Illuminated, Every Headline Is An April Fools Joke I just watched last Thursday's ER; ah, the wonders of videotape. In the first minute of the show, Dr. Kovac is called in to help subdue a struggling patient whose face is covered with a pillowcase on account of 'severe burns.' Kovac swiftly syringes up 10cc of Haldol and lets the patient have it right in the thigh, whereupon the pillowcase is removed to reveal a stunned Dr. Mallucci, who says the whole thing was supposed to be an April Fools joke. My immediate reaction--and this is surely a sign that I've been reading too much conspiracy stuff--was that it was a double-cross, Kovac was in on it, and Mallucci was the actual target. I think I ought to go take my Haldol now. Dutch company WaterNet thinks they have the answer to the (impending) problem of bandwidth bottleneck: using the plumbing system to transport data. Red Herring has the whole story. It's a superbly done article, if you know what I mean, and I would have bought it (even overlooking the DRIP acronym used to describe the 'research' project) if it hadn't been for the "client-side nozzle." Don't understand? Here's a hint. 2001.03.31 This Just In... B'rer Rabbit Thrown Into Briar Patch Aaron Anderer's Mountain Dew Tribute Page is but one of many dedicated to the drink I gave up for Lent (and anyone who knows me realizes how hard that is--far harder, for instance, than giving up beer, which I did last year). What makes it for me is the hypnotic background image. It's much better than Cats. I'm going to go back again and again and again... One of the things I like best about web surfing is its serendipity. For instance, while I was searching for an answer to an entirely different question, I stumbled across the story behind one of the most popular urban legends: the rocket car. At least, it's plausible that it's the real story. Read it and make up your own mind. 2001.03.30 Ding, Dong! The Witch Is Dead! That being said, was doing Jerri the smart move for Colby, Keith, and Tina? Hell, no, for two reasons:
In what may be the biggest case of identity fraud yet, two New York men are charged with stealing identity data from dozens of people and using it to fraudulently obtain between $100,000 and $1 million in cash and prizes. These guys aimed high--they allegedly had identity data for several members of the Forbes 400, and in fact they were caught trying to steal $10 million from the holdings of "an unidentified top executive listed in Forbes 500 wealthiest Americans." Actually, the Forbes 500 refers to companies; individuals are listed on the "Forbes 400 Richest in America", but what do you expect from the New York Post, anyway? The best quote shows that our heroes may have been trying a salami fraud writ large: "They targeted people they figured were so rich they would not notice they were missing $1 million." 2001.03.29 I'm A Genius! And I Insist On Making Sure Everybody Else Knows It! My take? It reminds me of the quote behind the dysfunction poster at despair.com--"The Only Consistent Feature of All of your Dissatisfying Relationships is You." It also reminds me of something else. Back in my elementary school days (basically, the Nixon and Ford Administrations), it was a well-known fact that I was the smartest kid in my class. Every year. Nobody else was close. A couple of kids thought they were, but they weren't. Now before you write me off as a Holley clone, here's my point: despite the fact that I spent those years in the company of the same sixty kids, and by the end of kindergarten all but the dimmest knew the score, I spent a lot of time and energy making damn sure that everybody around me knew I was the smartest kid in the class. Yet somehow I was always surprised when anybody called me 'arrogant.' I wasn't arrogant--I was just smarter than they were. Sure, it's a cliche, but it fit. It took me many many years before I realized exactly they thought that way (I'd previously attributed it to jealousy; I mean, the problem couldn't have been with me, could it?), and what did it was seeing myself at age 10 in the person of one of my son's friends. Let's call him Hal. Whenever any kid said anything incorrect, Hal corrected him. Whenever a question was asked, Hal was the first one to answer. If by chance another kid answered first, Hal gave a 'better' answer and then proceeded to explain why his answer was better. And on and on and on until I was ready to, ah, hell, I don't know what but it wouldn't have been very nice. My realization that I was seeing myself at that age was a whack on the side of the head unlike any I've experienced before or since. So to my classmates, I belatedly say, "I get it, and I'm sorry." So let's not be too hard on W. C. Holley; I just hope he gets a similar whack while he can still do something about it. 2001.03.28 New from Nike--The Air Sprain! On the Listening List: I just wrapped up Demolition Angel by Robert Crais (Amazon: paperback The Three Mile Island melt (not meltdown--the Government says so!) occurred 22 years ago today. That this anniversary passed largely unnoticed was due primarily to a somewhat larger oops that happened in 1986. 2001.03.27 If A Quip Falls On A Stairway, And No One Else Hears It, Is It Wit? There's a French expression, "l'esprit de l'escalier" (literally, "the wit of the staircase"), which describes thinking of exactly the right thing to say when it's no longer relevant. That goes double for today's Featured Site, both because it'll help avoid "l'esprit de l'escalier" and because St. Patrick's Day was a week and a half ago. Without further ado, An tInneal Mallachtaí - The Curse Engine (my favorite). If you'd like a gentler example of Irish, there's the Word Of The Day In Irish page. If you just came off a ten-day St. Paddy's bender and now want to offer a traditional Irish toast, IrishAbroad is the place for you. Today in history (courtesy of strive.to, whose web site appears to be broken at the moment): 2001.03.26 OK, We Opened The Borders And Made Ashtrays Out Of All The Lenin Statues; Now What? Simon Bone has a very nice site detailing "places in transition from authoritarian rule to, uh, something else." The opening quote about North Korea is funny in a pathetisad way. Of particular interest to me is the page describing his time in Moscow. And to think I was trying to angle my way onto a program that would have meant I'd spend some time there. Be careful what you wish for, eh? Holy Maple Leaf, Batman, eh? You're being knocked off north of the border!
2001.03.25 Once The Big Fish Eats The Smaller Fish, The Smaller Fish Don't Get Laid No More... I spent several years of my life (and way more money than I want to think about) addicted to a particular flavor of crack. Now you can read the behind-the-scenes story of Wizards Of The Coast and how it went to Hell in a three-ring binder of nine-pocket pages. And if the net weren't weird enough, you can have Zippy The Pinhead translate it for you! Disclaimer: The 'Zippy Meets Meta-HTML' page isn't an official ZTP page, so far as I can tell, but my GOD it's a HOLE all the way down to BURBANK (be sure and try your hand at the Unclaimed Property Bulletin Board System--you never know what you might have lost while in California)! And speaking of California, Everything2 has the etymology behind why it's really called "The Land Of Hot Sex".
2001.03.24 I May Seek You, But I Don't Seek Embedded Ads! Are you tired of ICQ's ever-increasing emphasis on ads? Here's somebody who knows what to do about it! If I wrote user interfaces (I actually used to at the day job, until they told me to stop), they'd look like this. And that doesn't even capture the beta version, which had options like "Clarify Corn-Fed Requirement" and "Bamboozle Customer." Ahh, those were the days. 2001.03.23 No Taco For You! or Tie A Yellow Ribbon Around Old Glory. Well, Mir made it down without killing anybody (at least not right away--refer to yesterday's entry about what might survive the landing). In all fairness, I'd like to note that Mir was designed with a life expectancy of three years, but survived for almost fifteen. That kind of puts the mishaps (the Russian word here is 'oopskis') in perspective. 2001.03.22: It Came From Lower Earth Orbit "Although the porthole and other windows were made of extra-hard quartz glass and mounted on titanium covered with enamel, they were partly destroyed by a colony of fungi and bacteria visible to the naked eye." And
And if that doesn't rock your world, how about this--Stephen Hawking's secret double life as a gangsta rapper? 2001.03.21: Connect the jumper cables, wait for some lightning, and POOF! OK, so this is the online equivalent of slapping a new front door on a half-remodeled house and calling it done. Sue me. Anyway, here's the new look for the site, and yes, I'm adding a weblog just like sixty gazillion other people. Squarely on the trailing edge, that's me. Over the next couple of weeks, I'll update the other pages (a/k/a "The Real Content") for a smoother look. I'll also be adding a lot of stuff I've written that never made it online. Don't worry if you're pining for how the site used to look (although I don't know why you would be, unless you've got a thing for state-of-the-art Web design circa 1995); I've got you covered.
Thought I'd give Blogger a try. Previous blog entries are here; bear in mind that navigating 'home' from that page or anywhere you go from there will bring you back to this page. If you want the original (pre-blog) home page, it's here, and the same navigational caveats apply. Don't worry about the stupid popup--I'll get rid of it as soon as I figure out how. |
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