A photo I took back in January that sat hidden on my laptop since then. I loaded a full resolution version of it up to my photo sales website.

Brilliant, brilliant post over at C & S

I'm going to sound a bit like Andy Rooney on this one, but here goes.

Do you remember the good old days when a half gallon of ice cream was actually a half gallon?

I didn't realize until I picked this package out of the freezer to have a bowl that those cheap bastards at Friendly's have removed a half pint of ice cream from my half gallon.

Doesn't seem so Friendly to me.

 
"I think he's pinning the tail on the donkey when he should be pinning the tail on the honkey."
               -- Malik Zulu Shabazz, commenting about Bill Cosby's recent comments.

(I saw Mr. Shabazz make this statement on Scarborough Country tonight.)

My postal carrier does a funny thing when I get a packge that is just a little too big for my mailbox. He opens the door to my mailbox, sets the box on the door, then hooks rubberbands over the box to the hook on the top of the box over to the hook on the door.

It seems to work, but it looks precarious.

An alert reader (Thanks reader!) pointed out this cartoon, which he thinks might be derivative of my gay terrorist wedding crack a few days ago, or at least similarly discovered.

I just realized that I appear to be in a fowl mood lately. Goose logo, duck photo & chicken cutlet vocabulary post.

A shot of a duck in flight that I took last Friday at a small lake behind the Wethersfield, CT DMV.

http://www.wonkette.com/archives/washingtons-other-w-twins-009699.php

A few months back I inadvertently learned the term "Chicken Cutlet," and ever since I really haven't had a chance to use it. I won't say who taught me the term though I'm pretty sure she reads this rag.

Did I use it correctly?

Video Shows Iraq Wedding Celebration. [Video might be a fake.]

So, we blew up a Terrorist Wedding.

Big deal.

Can you imagine the rancor from the left if it had been a Gay Terrorist Wedding?

I figure that at least four or five news telecasters' heads would pop right off given the prospect of covering such a story.

Some vehicles just aren't right for certain applications. (Photo from Tuba Boy.)

 
Silly me, I thought that "Totally Free Checking" meant totally free checking.

*After starter checks, customers purchase their checks

$24.85 for 150 checks of the cheapest design available.

Hell, I only opened the account because I didn't want to give paypal access to one of my real bank accounts. I only needed real checks so that I could hook the account up electronically to one of my other financial service providers since it doesn't accept starter checks to link accounts electronically.

For a bank that spends a lot of time bragging about this account, Sovereign bank could learn a lot from etradebank, where checks are always free.

The law offices of John C. Dearie.

[Via Overlawyered.com, who spotted it here.]

Amidst the dreck & flotsam that dominate over there, sometimes the Yahoo! message boards produce some gems of commentary.

This comment to a story entitled "Talking toilet orders German men to sit down" is worth reproducing in its entirety.

Buy for your wife a "Ghost Shopper Nag" and secretly slip it into her purse.

When your wife enters a store in the mall and reaches for a new dress or a new pair of shoes, it will say to her:

"You don't really need that do you? For Chrissakes, your fucking closet is ALREADY packed floor to ceiling with shoes. And does it make sense to buy a $450 dress that you'll wear just once before gaining too much weight to ever wear again? Trust me - this money would be better spent on beer and porn.

The poster, who goes by Gary Gilmore, JR, is a real character. He lists the following:

• Hobbies: Manslaughter, kidnapping, armed robbery, jaywalking
• Latest News: Received a note from Elizabeth Smart; shes in the market for a new boyfriend.

I like my choice, #3 below, best of all.

I just discovered that my W2004 shop is the number 32 most popular political store on all of CafePress.

Rusty, but apparently still functional.

I am a GRAMMAR GOD!

How grammatically sound are you?
brought to you by Quizilla(Via C&S.)

I wonder if the LA Times asks gun clubs for advice when it is writing an article about choosing whether to ride a bicycle or not.

Carrying a gun may give people a sense of security, but its value is questionable, said Grant Curtis of Share, an Orange County mountain bike club.

Couldn't let this one slip away...

"Authorities say 44-year-old Roger Chamberlain of McLean, Va. is accused of applying Vaseline petroleum jelly to every surface in his room at a Motel 6 just north of Binghamton.

After Chamberlain checked out last week, the cleaning crew discovered mattresses and bedding were slathered with the slippery stuff. Vaseline covered the TV set, furniture, carpeting and towels -- and everything else in the room.

Police found 14 empty Vaseline containers and numerous pornographic magazines in the room's trash can."

 
Offered without comment.

Childless couple told to try sex

A German couple who went to a fertility clinic after eight years of marriage have found out why they are still childless - they weren't having sex.

The University Clinic of Lubek said they had never heard of a case like it after examining the couple who went to see them last month for fertility tests.

Doctors subjected them to a series of examinations and found they were both apparently fertile, and should have had no trouble conceiving.

A clinic spokesman said: "When we asked them how often they had had sex, they looked blank, and said: "What do you mean?".

"We are not talking retarded people here, but a couple who were brought up in a religious environment who were simply unaware, after eight years of marriage, of the physical requirements necessary to procreate."

The 30-year-old wife and her 36-year-old husband are now being given sex therapy lessons while the university clinic undertakes a study to try to find out if there are more couples with a similar lack of sex education.

Yikes!

California's Governor Wants State to Pocket Punitive Damages, or at least 75% of each award.

I like the idea, though it lacks any direct cap on damages.

 
Man arrested for displaying anti-Bush sign on a public street.

A southwestern Wisconsin man is fighting a civil citation for bringing a sign that read "F U G W" with him as he watched President Bush pass through Platteville last week.
...
Police then handcuffed him and took him to the police station, where he was photographed, fingerprinted, cited $243 for disorderly conduct and released. Van den Bosch said he hasn't paid the fine.

Platteville Police Lt. Tom Schmid said a business owner along the street had complained about the sign, and officers thought children might see it. Van den Bosch wrote the letters "r e e" and "s" in tiny print, Schmid said.

"We had to take some action," Schmid said. "If we were wrong, then the citation will be voided and taken care of that way. That's the way the system is supposed to work."

No, it isn't.

Police officers are supposed to know the bounds of the law. Police officers are supposed to know when to tell complainants that there is nothing they can do. Police officers are supposed to leave citizens alone when they are not breaking the law.

That's the way the system is supposed to work, jackass. [Oh no, I hope they don't want to arrest me now.]

 
How appropriate that when going to a freedom loving place residents of Vietnam will have to show their papers.

"IDs or passports are now required at Internet cafes just like at boarding gates for flights," Nguyen Minh Vinh, a police officer who helped write the new policy, was quoted Wednesday by the paper as saying.

Decision No. 71 also requires Internet cafe owners to document the time each user spends online and to update software to keep users from bypassing firewalls, the paper said. Those who fail to comply could be fined up to 50 million dong (US$3,200) or face prosecution, according to the Official Gazette where the decision was first published.

Possible jokes:

• 50 Million Dong, I think that's a good measure of how much gay p0rn their is on the web.
• Strangely "dong" is one of the things blocked by the firewall.
• No, I'm not talking about a Microsoft .net Passport.

And on the (even) less funny side:

About 4 million out of Vietnam's 81 million people access the Internet. There are about 57,000 foreign Web sites specializing or relating to Vietnam, the An Ninh The Gioi said.

The communist government has cracked down on users accessing the Web for political or religious dissent. Several cyber dissidents have received lengthy sentences over the past two years.

Last week, Nguyen Vu Binh, a former journalist with a communist journal, had his seven-year jail sentence upheld by an appeals court in Hanoi. He was convicted of espionage for posting an article on the Internet criticizing the Vietnamese government.

At the encouragement of Mrs. Comedian I've decided to hawk some more wares on the web. I set up a (demo) account over at Exposure Manager to sell prints of some of the better images I've created since getting back into photography. The demo account only allows 25 megabytes of storage so for now I just have two images available over there. The shot of the dramatic sky that I took at the McLean Game Refuge & that shot of my Volkswagen Jetta that I like so much.

The demo only lasts a month, after that I'll review my results and consider upgrading & uploading more.

No real content here, just a neat picture I spotted on Yahoo.

WOOHOO!

Syracuse News 10 did a story about Freeper Behind Liberal Lines' "Ithaca is the City of Evil" campaign AND they plugged my city of evil merchandise!

Let the orders roll in.

McLean Game Refuge May 8, 2004. My test fisrt post with the new "Hello" feature of Blogger that hosts pictures for you. Apparently you can click on it to see a larger version.

Since photoblogging seems all the rage of late, here's a slide I shot on Saturday.

Canon T90 w/ FD 20mm f1:2.8 lens. Fuji Astia film. Exposure 1/350 @ f8. Tripod & remote release used.

The day before I snapped this picture of a stripped car near my workplace it was only missing one door. I saw it driving home that night and thought that it might be fun to photographically document the process of how pieces disappeared from the car, how long it took, which pieces went first, etc.. By 11am the day I took the picture all four doors, the hood, the trunk lid, the taillight assemblies, a wheel, and at least one seat were gone. The day after I took this picture the entire hulk was gone. As I was setting up to take this shot the flatbed wrecker happened by, making what I consider to be a pretty fun juxtaposition.

 

Quite a remarkable caption, for the AP, showing below this rather unremarkable photo of John Kerry.

John Kerry is seen in a 1974 photograph. Kerry received a law degree from Boston College in 1976. When the Middlesex County, Mass., district attorney promoted John Kerry to be his top assistant just months after he had earned a law degree, veteran prosecutors grumbled. Some thought he was little more than a smooth, politically connected opportunist looking for higher office. (AP Photo/The Boston Globe)

Blogger now has a built in commenting system. Feel free to give it a try.

I'll be the good cop.

Click for story.

And I'll be the bad cop.

"I think they misspelled 'Lies' in the title of President Clinton's memoir."

                      -- Me

"In Arizona, male inmates at the Maricopa County jail in Phoenix are made to wear women's pink underwear as a form of humiliation."

Actually I don't think this is true, though I'm not sure how to disprove it.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio switched to issuing all his prisoners pink-colored underwear, NOT FEMALE underwear, as a way to keep the prisoners from stealing the jail's underwear. It was a cost control measure, not an attempt at sexual humiliation.

He proudly details this and a lot of his other cost cutting measures at his jail in "America's Toughest Sheriff: How We Can Win the War Against Crime". Sheriff Joe is also known for his bologna sandwiches, his "Posse" of armed and unarmed citizen volunteers, as well as housing a lot of his prisoners in old army tents.

Once again the NY Times has gotten it wrong.

Newspapers See Danger in Text Messaging

Funny that the headline says that the newspapers see "danger" in text messaging, suggesting that it isn't only a threat to their circulation, but also a threat to society.

International editors and publishers warned Friday that nontraditional communications -- such as cell phone text messages -- are rapidly outflanking radio, television, and print media because of their immediacy and proximity to the public.

In a two-day meeting to stimulate newspaper readership among the young, publishers from the Los Angeles Times, USA Today and the New York Post exchanged views with European media leaders on shrinking newspaper circulation and the European and American media scene.

The growing 'thumb generation' posed the greatest new challenge to traditional media, with cell phone text messages conveying news, rumors and gossip, said Pedro J. Ramirez, editor of Spain's El Mundo.

Zapatero's Socialist Party was accused of calling a massive rally in Madrid the night before the March 14 elections on short notice by having people spread the word through cell phone messages.

Accused. I didn't realize calling a rally of people together was something criminal.

"This is a communications circuit very difficult to control but easy to manipulate because it's as if every citizen had a printing press at home," Ramirez [Pedro J. Ramirez, editor of Spain's El Mundo] said. "And whoever wants to insert himself into the chain can make an exponential effect during crises."

It is "very difficult to control." I wonder if that is the real reason it worries newspapers. It isn't that it threatens circulation, it threatens control.

Agitator's first rule of freedom of the press -- Own a printing press.

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Digital Cameras Change Perception of War

"With the technology now, the amateur photographer is as capable as a professional journalist and is operating with the same tools: Digital camera, laptop and an Internet connection," said Keith W. Jenkins, photo editor of the Washington Post Magazine.

The embedded process was supposed to give government a better handle on what journalists were doing, but now you have this whole rogue operation of civilians with digital cameras who have access to things the media don't," he said.
...
"The iconic images coming out of this war may be the amateur photographs of Iraqi prisoners," said Peter Howe, the former director of photography for Life magazine and curator of an exhibit on the Iraq war now running at the International Center of Photography in New York.
...
Because digital cameras have features like automatic focus, they have made it easy for anyone to take technically good photographs. "You no longer have to have someone standing in bright sunlight to get a good picture of them," Howe said.

Great, now how about somebody finds a way to use all this great technology to destroy truly oppressive governments.

Maybe Betsy Ross was right, the way to beat Islam is through sex.

Captioned, but not otherwise altered.

Poll adds to push for a la carte cable pricing

The a la carte model has been promoted as a way to combat rising cable prices. Conservative groups also see it as a defense against what they see as indecent shows. 'I don't have to buy Hustler to get Good Housekeeping. So why should I have to do that in cable?' says Jan LaRue, chief counsel for Concerned Women for America.

Smart lady, good spin.

If this went through I'd keep CBS, NBC, PBS, WB, UPN, HBO, Cspan,Cspan2, Discovery, History, Food, Comedy Central, USA, Spike & Nick. That's it, the rest can go.

I'd gladly see my cable bill split in two like my electric bill, with a charge for carrying the signal (delivery) and a seperate charge for content.

Here's a neat bit of Air Force One Trivia.

[T]he president's plane includes a medical facility that carries enough equipment and doctors to perform open heart surgery if needed. It also has its own pharmacy.

I decided to support one of my favorite bloggers, Mr. Clayton Cramer, by purchasing a BlogAd on his site. I'm hawking my comedianstore.com blog. I'll report back the results of my ad at the end of its run.

OK, bike geek stuff, but it looks like Kerry actually has two Serotta bikes. (Yes, usually priced in the $4000-$7000+ range)

From the pix it looks like one in orange with shimano dura-ace drivetrain (made in Japan)

And the other with red-yellow fade with Campy drivetrain (made in Italy).

To be fair, Shimano and Campagnolo are really the only companies in the world that make road bike parts, and the frames are made in the good old USA!

The helmet and shoes look the same, but notice the coordinating water bottles. Interesting that he wears bike shorts (a must), but sticks with the more "man of the people" t-shirt.