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My Cookie Passengers

It's Girl Scout cookie distribution day, which means loading the truck with a troop's worth of cookies, then taking them back to a garage, where they must be unloaded, sorted and dished out to each girl. I have several thousand bucks worth of cookies. My truck is 8 years old. These cookies are probably worth more than the truck. I like the truck better, though.

Lex TV 201

Here are another dozen videos:

The world's smartest penguin, and the world's most foolish nature-lovers. 

A pretty cool smoking trick.

Frogger.

A CGI recreation of Sulley's landing.

European basketball has much better entertainment during the breaks. [NSFW]

This Sean Connery commercial is worse than anything Bill Murray did in Lost in Translation.

Kayakers go over a 300-foot dam.

How not to go cycling off road.

Can you explain what makes this football go back up?

Staged, or not, this little clip makes me laugh.

Some slick tricks of various kinds. 

Cage pimps Pachinko.

Tuesday Travel Photo (No. 219)

This is the ferry we took across the Irish Sea from Dublin to Holyhead, Wales. We had seen some pretty scary videos of the Irish Sea when it gets angry (this, for example was taken almost a year to the day after our crossing), but our trip was so smooth, you could have waterskiied all the way to Holyhead.

Next time, however, I want to take the ferry from Belfast to Stranraer, where I hope to shoot a round of 18 with some Clayeholers.

Bellweathers

if the Mardi Gras casino night at my church is any indicator, many people will soon be eating at soup kitchens. The celebration was mediocre. The prizes were weak. The admission prices were low. The silent auction items were mostly junk, and the bids were lower than one would expect even for such junk. Not good.

The Aquarium

I'm not just a guest now, I'm a member.

I like this place.

Celebrating

another big settlement reached during today's mediation in San Francisco. Celebrating with a pint of Guinness at Royal Exchange.

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Lex TV 200

Here are another dozen videos:

The Irish Obamas celtic rock band.

Hamas, on using civilians as shields.

The REAL difference between liberals and conservatives. Seriously.

This crazy McCain supporter wins first prize for most insane voter of the year.

Bill Maher about Sarah Palin and religion.

My favorite Super Bowl ad: need a new job?

A haunted mansion simulation from Rollercoaster Tycoon.

Yet more Unnecessary Censorship.

The human pinata is more like the rest of us than we might think.

Dude parks his truck at a store and thinks it gets stolen. Watch.

A video glorifying the Hollywood ASST.

The Facebook Suicide Hotline.

Tuesday Travel Photo (No. 218)

This is the statue of Molly Malone, at Grafton Street, near Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. Molly was a fishmonger, and she inspired the song that brought us the great Irish lyric, "Alive, Alive-O" from the folk song, Cockles and Mussels (also called "Molly Malone"):

In Dublin's fair city, where the girls are so pretty
I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone
As she wheeled her wheel-barrow
Through streets broad and narrow
Crying cockles and mussels, alive, alive-O!
Alive, alive-O! alive, alive-O!
Crying cockles and mussels, alive, alive-O!
She was a fish-monger, but sure 'twas no wonder
For so were her father and mother before
And they each wheeled their barrow
Through streets broad and narrow
Crying cockles and mussels, alive, alive-O!
Alive, alive-O! alive, alive-O!
Crying cockles and mussels, alive, alive-O!

She died of a fever, and no one could save her
And that was the end of sweet Molly Malone
But her ghost wheels her barrow
Through streets broad and narrow
Crying cockles and mussels, alive, alive-O!
Alive, alive-O! alive, alive-O!
Crying cockles and mussels, alive, alive-O!

The real Molly, if there was one, died young, but the song and this statue have given her a taste of immortality.

[posted late because I was waiting for my replacement credit card to arrive to pay my renewal.]

Barney the Fool and Four Other Passing Observations

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) has this very blunt message for bankers: “People really hate you, and they’re starting to hate us because we’re hanging out with you. And you have to help us deal with that.” And I have this message for Barney Frank. We freakin' hate your ass already.

Best Mark Twain line ever: "Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." I agree, and Barney Frank is the biggest idiot of them all, save one. The only member of Congress who is a bigger fool than Barney Frank is Maxine Waters. Watch the clip in this post; it's painful, but watch it.

Blogger Adrianos Facchetti says "Last year a Los Angeles Superior Court judge told me and another lawyer that 'litigation is the sport of kings.' Another judge in the same courthouse told me it's not really worth it to go to trial unless you have at least $500,000.00 in damages." I say: I could become a very wealthy lawyer taking $300,000 cases to trial in L.A. Superior Court.

Octuplet mom Nadya Suleman wants to go back to college to get her master's degree. In counseling. I think perhaps Nadya Suleman needs counseling more than counseling needs Nadya Suleman. I'm not pleased by all the death threats she's been getting, but I am glad, at least, that the video-game shopping, manicure getting, celebate, Angelina Jolie-obsessed, incomeless mother of 14 got fired by her publicist and is no longer on the Internet begging for donations. I do hope they take those babies away from her and give them to someone who is not disturbed and does not have her priorities so far out of whack.

The California legislature seems to have adopted Rahm Emanuel's philosophy: Never let a serious crisis go to waste. The pending California budget deal includes provisions to include biometrics in our driver's licenses. I think that would have been rejected by voters overwhelmingly.

The Best of David Letterman's Crazy Guests

If you missed Joaquin Phoenix's appearance on Letterman Wednesday, you missed out. I'm sure he was putting us on, but it was awesome nonetheless:

Here's a clip of the appearance Dave was referencing when he apologized to Farrah Fawcett:

Here is the infamous Crispin Glover appearance, which is one of the strangest things ever on live TV:

Here is the infamous Madonna appearance, where she got all.

The Drew Barrymore Happy Birthday flash:

One of my favorites was the Borat appearance:

Tuesday Travel Photo (No. 217)

Stacked cannonballs at El Morro, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The location of this shot was on the top level of the fort, toward the bayside.

It's another one of those sights in the real world that made me think about Disneyland and think, "they really did a good job of making the rides look real."

750,000 Hits

I'm 3/4 of the way to my goal of a million hits. Then I might quit blogging. I hit 750,000 sometime yesterday.

Rainbows and Hail

The view out my window this afternoon.
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A couple of hundred yards away, we had hail, but it missed our house.
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Lex TV 199

Here are another dozen videos:

Swedish twin crazy chicks on a highway.

Another video of Peter Schiff owning Steve Forbes.

Poor public access Christian talk show guy is unable to hang up on heckler.

Cop to cameraman: "put the camera down ... I can do whatever I want to do."

Sometimes, it really is too cold to go outside.

The best reason yet to switch to AT&T?

More evidence that UPS drivers suck.

People really do play Quidditch.

How not to exit a parking garage.

How to get a heckler to leave.

How to shut a heckler up for good.

Arlo Guthrie's changing his name to Chrysler.

Lex TV 198

Here are another dozen videos:

Aubrey Coleman stomps on an opponent's face.

Tom Chaney talks about restoring a Model A.

There are no elevator accidents.

I do not understand why Amy Winehouse is considered a good singer.

Old and busted: One Week. New hotness: Ten Years.

Your WTF TV ad of the day.

Timing is everything. On stage, at work, actually, pretty much everywhere.

Skeeter the narcoleptic dog.

Sheep in trunk. Just watch it.

Another piece of proof that the UPS guy is a douchebag.

The wierdest video you'll see all day.

A great, albeit fake, lawyer's personal injury ad.

Tuesday Travel Photo (No. 216)

This was one of our most surprising moments as travelers. We were taking a 90 minute brews cruise in the great North Sea, out the harbor and beyond the bluff upon which sits the ruins of Scarborough Castle (seen here in the distance, below the nose of the helicopter) when, without warning, a helicopter from the Royal Air Force approached and began lowering airmen onto our ship. The helicopter then moved away, and after a bit, returned and hoisted them all back up, and flew away. I have no idea how routine or unusual this was, but it was startling to us at first.

No, they didn't drop this fellow into the drink. He made it onboard quite smoothly.

[I originally accidently posted this as a repeat of my Anne Bronte grave photo]

These People Are Idiots

Senator Claire McCaskill proposes to limit executive pay to what the President earns for as long as a company is getting federal loans.

Interesting point, but how will they keep top talent? My guess is that the pay cap will give them a huge competitive disadvantage when it comes to hiring executives. Salary and talent is never a perfect correlation, but when you lower salaries, that tends to lead to "bright-sizing", where all your best and brightest move on to higher paying positions, because they can, and you are left with the ones who don't have the skills, experience and talent to find something better. If she thinks these people are idiots, wait until you see the folks who replace them.

Ranking ten movies I recently watched on DVD (No. 19)

Here are another ten recent pulls from the Netflix queue, with my one-to-five plus rating, and the IMDB users' score.

1. Speed Racer (6.5) +++++ I loved this movie. I know a lot of people think it sucks, but I loved it.
2. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (7.7) ++++ Great title. Great story.
3. Ghost Town (7.2) ++++ Loved it. Funny. Interesting characters. Too many bus scenes.
4. Indiana Jones Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (6.7) +++ The 3rd or 4th best of the series. The fridge scene was realy that bad.
5. Chocolat (7.3) +++ Too slow for me, but it makes me want to visit France again.
6. Rambo (7.4) +++ It was better than I expected, but not great.
7. Sex and the City (5.4) ++ I expected quality. Mostly, it was contrived bull. The ending was awful.
8. Happy Feet (6.7) ++ Cute; the kids liked it, but not that much.
9. You, Me and Dupree (5.6) ++ Only slightly funny. Implausiable. Didn't hold my attention.
10. Meet the Spartans (2.4) + This movie sucked, even if you like this kind of crap. I couldn't stand to watch the whole thing.

The next list will have some crap, because Netflix is reaching deep into our queue right now.

New Research Tool

Answer analyst goes live tomorrow. It looks like a great new web research tool.

http://answeranalyst.com/?id=TLFOnline

Breeding Love Trouble and Four Other Passing Observations

Portland's mayor has a sex scandal involving a possibly underage same-sex booty call. That's curious enough, but the names of the players make the story awesome. The mayor: Sam Adams. The gay fellow: Beau Breedlove. I'm not making that up. Apparently, it's not just a porn name, either. It's the guy's name. I hold this truth to be self-evident: if you are the mayor, and male, and a young stud named Beau Breedlove comes around, leave him the hell alone. He's bad news for you.

"Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before." Rahm Emanuel, November 2008. What would people have said if Karl Rove had said the same thing about 9/11?

The rest of us saw this coming, Mr. President. Why didn't you? You offer to sit down with people like the president of Iran, and this is what you get:Iran says Obama's offer to talk proves that the U.S. is a failure.

HR 414, the Camera Phone Predator Alert Act. Now that we've solved our more pressing problems, let's mandate that all cell phone cameras make an audible click when they take a picture. A great idea in the gym locker room, Congressman. Not so great for people witnessing crimes.

I used to wonder why so many wealthy liberal politicians were so enamored of tax increases for the rich. Now I understand. Many of them don't care, because they don't pay any taxes on the vast amounts of income that they simply don't report, not until they get nominated and "vetted" for a cabinet post, at least.