PINKEYE... the silent annoyer

The Onion has a bunch of hilarious magazine covers. Enjoy them here.

Worth reading...

Here are some goodies around the web today:

• I don't follow MLS much, preferring to watch La Liga and the UEFA Champions League much more, but SI has a chat with MLS Commissioner Don Garber. In it, Garber proves what a complete fucking idiot he is. It scares me that the future of U.S. professional soccer is in his hands. He appears to loathe the sport itself and completely discounts the way it's organized and funded in every other country it's played in.
  
  
  
• Google is trying to get a bunch of software developers and social networking sites together to form a social networking "platform" that will take on Facebook. So far the NY Times mentions Salesforce, LinkedIn, Friendster (this still exists?), hi5, Oracle, etc. I kind of like this idea, in a way. The biggest problem I have with social networking sites is that they all feel too "flavor of the week." In other words, I wonder if two months after I sign up for one, all the cool kids will have found a new site to use, leaving the mouth-breathing masses behind. Some type of standard platform could conceivably allow, for example, LinkedIn users (business people, generally) to interact with Orkut users (Brazilians, generally). You get 15 or 20 smaller social networking sites to plug into a much larger universe and it might attract a lot of people who want flexiblity.
  
  
• Rocks, paper, scissors -- the ultimate game of chance has a governing body. Enjoy pretending that random luck involves strategy. Make sure you read up on the 27 ridiculous "gambits."
  

Get me a lattte, and put out that fire while you're at it

If you're going to be the victim of a natural disaster, some natural disasters are apparently much better than others. For instance, you probably don't want to live in a poor, mostly black city that votes Democratic. As the AP and several others have noticed since yesterday, the government 's response to the wildfires in San Diego County have looked like a precision military operation compared to the half-assed and shameful non-response to Hurricane Katrina.

For instance, while the media and elected officials propagated made-up stories of savagery in New Orleans, the displaced people at San Diego's shelters get treated like royalty (or at least a celebrity rehab center):

Bands belted out rock 'n' roll, lavish buffets served gourmet entrees, and massage therapists helped relieve the stress for those forced to flee their homes because of wildfires.

"The people are happy. They have everything here," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared Monday night after his second Qualcomm tour.

Although anxieties ran high, the misery index seemed low as the celebrity governor waded through the mob. Scarcely a complaint was registered with him.

Before I die...

Before I die, I'd like to enjoy the following experiences:
- watch the following soccer matches: Boca Plate v. River Plate, Flamengo v. Fluminense, Lazio v. Roma and Rangers v. Celtic and most of all, Real Madrid v. Barcelona
- take train trips though the Canadian Rockies and Switzerland
- attend the Super Bowl (for the football, but mainly for the parties)
- visit Rio de Janeiro
- visit Hong Kong during the Chinese New Year
- fly in space
- be eating waffles at 3 a.m. at Waffle House after a night of heavy drinking and witness an argument between two Waffle House employees that results in one of them getting all stabby.

Schrute Farms

If you're ever looking for a quaint bed and breakfast to stay at in rural Northeastern Pennsylvania, look no further than Schrute Farms. The star attraction here is the beets... all kinds of beet dishes and beet treats. Plus no other agro-tourism destination features the hospitality of one Cousin Mose (pictured), the sidekick of proprietor Dwight Schrute. Check out the reviews over at tripadvisor.

Cousinly love

You probably saw all the coverage today of reports that T-L's boy, Barack Obama, is the eighth cousin of Dick "Shotgun" Cheney. The NY Post covered it in its typical retarded fashion here. CNN teased with the story that Obama and Satan Himself were "cousins." (I happened to be at the gym at the time and nearly flew off the treadmill.)

The problem, though, is that most journalists have so little understanding of genealogy that they throw these things out there without any context. So assuming Lynn Cheney's amateur family tree is correct (a huge assumption in the first place), we've only established the fact that Obama and Cheney share a common ancestor from 10 generations ago. It's not that impressive when you consider the fact that any two common ancestors from 20 generations ago (around the time of Columbus' stumble upon the New World) would have between 600,000 and 1 million descendents today. And if you go to some point between 75 and 150 generations ago (the first or second millienium BC), you'll probably find the lucky bloke who is the ancestor of all human beings alive today.

If you're reading this, there's a not-to-bad chance you're a cousin of Dick Cheney, too. You're welcome.

Gay primer

A former colleague (who was probably the best boss I ever worked for) in Boston has a new blog. Lucky for us breeders, he gives a quick rundown of the various segments of the gay community. Tip: "bears" might be as frightening as, you know, actual bears.

Rogue state

A single nation on the entire planet is so far outside of the mainstream of world opinion. Guess which one....

In December, the United Nations took up a resolution calling for the abolition of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for children and young teenagers. The vote was 185 to 1. This country was the one vote against.

This country re-elected an incumbent president who would have lost by a whopping 88% to 11% vote if the world's citizen's had been allowed to cast ballots.

This country is known to possess three types of weapons of mass destruction: nuclear weapons, chemical weapons and biological weapons, and it is the only country to have used nuclear weapons in combat.

Fully 59% of this country's citizens say they believe the events in the Book of Revelation are going to come true, and nearly one-quarter think the Bible predicted the Sept. 11 attack.

This country contributes less foreign aid on a per-capita basis than almost any other industrialized nation, yet its citizens routinely perceive the country as more generous than it actually is. The average citizen believes that this nation spends 24 percent of its budget on assistance to developing nations, more than 20 times the actual figure.

This is the only industrialized country that doesn't provide free universal health coverage to its citizens. It also has the second-highest infant mortality rate in the industrialized world.

Polls demonstrate that the global community is concerned with this country's levels of nationalism and religiosity and the United States’ tendency to sacrifice social safety nets. The polls also reveal that the world sees this country as dishonest, avaricious, and violent.

Since the end of its civil war in 1865 (fought over the right to hold slaves), the country has fought wars against or militarily occupied the following countries at one point or another (often on multiple occasions in different decades): Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Phillipines, Mexico, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, China, Russia, Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, Grenada, Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan.

We should think about some of these things next time we hear phrases like Axis of Evil and Rogue Nation tossed around.

Worst. Parody. Ever.

Joe Barton, the ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee issued a press release that uses (badly) the Simpsons characters Mayor Quimby and Monty Burns to characterize the SCHIP children's healthcare coverage as prone to abuse by, of all people, rich Republican industrialists (I guess). If you can make sense of it, bravo. I'm just amazed that a congressman would put out a "Children's Healthcare Fact of the Day" web page that looks like it was made by a 15-year-old.

Stabbing the Statue of Liberty in the eye

I don't get to catch Bill Maher's HBO show often, but the guy is still one of the wittiest people in the entire country (right up there with Colbert). His recent monologue about Obama's decision to forego wearing one of those patronizing flag pins on his lapel was a work of art.

Some quips:

- "Show me a man wearing an American flag pin in his lapel, and I'll show you an asshole."

- "Another in a series of bullshit non-stories that have zero effect on the troops, the war, or anything in the real world. Or, as Fox calls it: Breaking news."

- "This is typical press hypocrisy. They say they want someone who doesn't give pat political answers, but when they get one, they call them a loser. They say they don't want safe robots like [Sen. Hillary Clinton], but they create conditions where only that species can survive."

and perhaps my favorite:

- "Of course, the Republicans are the party of Mark Foley, and Ted Haggard, and Larry Craig, and countless other closeted homosexuals... so their fixation on jewelry is understandable."

Go here for the video.

Put the game on and bring me my beer!

When you just want to go out with friends and have a few cocktails and socialize, a sports bar's tacky decor, hyperactive TVs and spilled-beer stink can ruin the fun. On the other hand, when you're a Philadelphia Eagles fan stuck in places like Providence, R.I. and Atlanta, Ga., a good Sunday sports bar is a must. This summary of what goes into creating the perfect sports bar is just sublime. (Hint: The sports bar in the picture is probably not the greatest sports bar ever. Just a guess.)

Now ad free

Fuck Google AdSense. For some crazy reason I acutally thought their crappy ads would give the blog some kind of Interwebs Authority as a legitimate site. What the hell was I thinking? Oh well, now I can't count on that 2.23 cents I was due to earn this year.

Keeping up with the NY Times readers

I routinely get enjoyment out of looking at which stories are listed on the "Most Read" index on the NY Times homepage. The relative interest in the various stories reveals a lot about the kind of people who read The Times: they come off looking like anxiety-riddled, over-protective, upper-middle-class parents. Top concerns include ANYTHING to do with college admissions or pre-school admissions, any trend story involving parenting, any trend story involving money and any trend story involving Expensive Things Other Upper Middle Class People Like Me Might Be Buying.

Today the Times' top read was a story about how children's picky eating habits might be inherited from their parents. The story angle itself wasn't toooooo obnoxious, but you have to love this little paragraph:

Over in New Jersey, the Bakers changed their November family vacation to accommodate Sasha, an 11-year-old so averse to fruits and vegetables that the smell of orange juice once made him faint. Instead of flying to Prague, Sasha’s parents decided to go to Barcelona, where they hope the food will be more to his liking.

So poor little Sasha had to spend his summer traipsing around Catalonia instead of Bohemia? For shame! What kind of maniacal, overbearing parents reschedule their entire summer trip because the spoiled brat doesn't like a cup of o.j.?

Gold-diggers and Beethoven stretchers

The Freakanomics Blog has a nice little post on the economics of "gold diggers" (the types Kanye rapped about, not cranky bearded prospectors). It's a great little response to a craigslist poster asking for unspecific advice on how to snag a man who makes $500,000 or more per year.

Fun with music: A couple of Norwegians have taken Beethoven's 9th Symphony and stretched it into a looooong and slooooooow 24-hour-long orchestral piece. You can listen to it online and apparently it will actually be performed live eventually.

On a related note, another software wizard compressed every Beatles album into a trippy one-hour MP3. Instead of speeding up the recordings (which would make McCartney and Lennon sound like Alvin, Simon and Theodore they used software that with a little logarithmic magic can cut out the unimportant bits of audio data and allow users to change tempos without affecting pitch. (This has been around for a few years and the program Acid is particularly useful for this kind of basement trickery.)

Also, I'm starting a new tab for any money/economics related posts called "c.r.e.a.m." Fellow Wu-Tang fans will understand.

This is why the terrorists hate us

Sometimes we stumble upon a website that at first seems to be an elaborate practical joke. Then we realize there really are retards who ascribe to the website's sociopathic worldview. This is one of those sites.

Back from Nashville

Di and I got back from Nashville. It was a swell weekend (ugh, I'm starting to talk like a gosh-darn Southerner). We started off our trip by taking a major side excursion up to Dawsonville, Ga. so that Dionne could do some shopping at the outlet stores.

I was fine with that, on two conditions: she had to let me stop in the Adidas and Puma stores (I'm still a euro-trash raver at heart) and I would be able to devise a back route to get us back to I-75, the main highway between Atlanta and Chattanooga, Tenn.

The shopping highlight: Finding some incredible deals in the Adidas outlet, including the Adidas Superster IIs with graffiti designs on them. They also had a bunch of really cool t-shirts with national (soccer/footie) team designs. My favorite was a bright yellow, green and red Cameroon shirt with a huge lion head design on the back. What can I say, I like bright shit like that.

After we left, I figured out that we could take a little two-lane back road through the North Georgia mountains. It turned out to be about a 60-mile drive through windy, hilly terrain on a day with absolutely perfect Indian summer weather. In fact, the drive up to Nashville was suprisingly scenic. Chattanooga is quite an attractive city. It's perched on the bank of a winding river and has huge bluffs overlooking downtown from every direction. Reminded me a bit of Pittsburgh, actually. Just a bit northwest of Chattanooga is Lake Nickajack. Route 24 took us right across the lake and gave us some great views of the southern Appalachians.

Once in Nashville we stayed with Di's parents. Saturday morning I went with my father-in-law to their church (it's Episcopal, if you're curious) for the Men's Club saturday morning breakfast. I somehow received a round of applause when he introduced me to the crowd of men in their 50s and 60s (who were all named Jerry and Dale, if I recall). After a quick meal of sausage biscuits we spent the morning doing repairs on the church and rectory. My father in law was especially useful for his electrical/lighting prowess, which meant the other Men's Club members treated us all day long like we were Edison and Tesla themselves.

Not much else really happened. Di's parents treated us to a nice Second Anniversary dinner on Saturday night at J. Alexander's, a nice steakhouse in Brentwood, near Nashville. The drive up and back really inspired Di and I to get some camping done, so now we're planning to do a little camping trip in the next few weeks at one of the parks in North Georgia. We just need to stock up on some equipment first: hiking boots, a second warm sleeping bag, a lantern and a small camp stove.

All the way to Nashville

Di and I are driving to Nashville this weekend. It will be our first mini-trip out of Atlanta since we moved down here (we've barely ventured outside our neighborhood, let alone much Georgia or the south in general). We're visiting her parents. Should be nice.

Also, check out this great article on China.

Nightmare fuel

You didn't really think that creepy fat guy who managed all the boy bands in the mid-90s was just an interested music fan, did you? It turns out that Lou Pearlman's story is even worse than we thought:

One person recalls him spreading his legs while wearing a white terrycloth robe and matching underwear, then uttering the not-quite-Mae-Westian come-on "You're a smart boy. Figure it out."

I don't can't decide whether this is hilarious or creepy. I'm gonna go with both.

Taco me

Some people might find this crazy, but some of us have a strange addiction to tracking down the best tacos in town. Now that I'm in Atlanta, home to about a million more Mexican immigrants than Rhode Island, I plan to explore as many taquerias as possible.

That's also the mission behind the ingenious blog called The Burrito Bracket. A Chicago blogger is running a tournament of Mexican food (burritos, as well as tacos and tortas).

I particulary enjoyed his (or her) take on just what it is that makes a truly great taco: corn tortillas (NEVER flour!), quality meat and a mixture of ciltantro and onions (never tomatoes, lettuce, etc.). Amen.