Smarter Than You Think I Am

As of a few minutes ago, NBC called Ohio for Obama, putting the projections at 195 Electoral Votes. Add in the Pacific Coast states, and you have 268. This means that if one more uncalled state goes Blue, we’re sitting comfortably over the 270 mark.

6:35PM PST

http://www.finallyequal.com/trailer-small.html

It’s 2081 and everyone is finally equal.

I like less-than-subtle social commentary as much as the next guy, and Vonnegut was the king of it, but I can’t imagine this movie being very good.

I’ll see it anyway. I guess.

I was thinking about all the many distopian future stories and the vast majority of stories about a dystopian future basically assume the liberal agenda wins and life becomes ridiculous.

While we might accuse the current administration of using ideas right out of the 1984 playbook from their domestic spying to their use of misleading verbiage. I like how a republican official referred to their headquarters in Denver as “The Ministry of Truth”, no one mentioned that little slip. If I wrote the news, you can bet I wouldn’t skewered that little slip.  On the theme of political correctness, equality and fairness, you have Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron and Incompetence, a story in a future where you’re not allowed to discriminate against anyone, so you must hire underqualified people. Liberality for All is a recent comic book series that specifically attacks a world after president Hillary Clinton. Apparently Hillary bans “hate speech” in this book. Who knows, maybe she still can in 2016.

Ayn Rand practically invented the hypothetical future where environmentalists/populists/welfare state take over the world and no one is allowed to take care of their own property, but there’s a few others like that, where the goal is to feed the poor, crush innovation and discourage the intelligent and ambitious.

There’s also the theme of a “nanny state” run amok. Clockwork Orange, Demolition Man and even Wall-E come fall in this theme. I sure loved Wall-E.

Then we have stories where the mantra ”we have the right to screw and do drugs” turns into ”Everyone must screw and do drugs.” Logan’s Run and Brave New World are two glaring examples of that.

There are a lot of stories of a future where religion is banned, or science is the new religion. THX-1138 is a good example, and then there’s that South Park Episode. Even the game Warhammer 40,000 has a backstory like that.

What the heck is up with all these science fiction writers being so anti-liberal?

The only “Republican World” dystopian sci-fi I can think of is “The Watchmen” set in an alternate mid-80’s universe where Nixon is in his 5th term, and Fahrenheit 451 where censorship is taken to an extreme.

This topic has come up for me a couple times recently, so I thought I’d ask here. What bothers you when you see it done in a movie or on TV because it’s so wrong, impossible or different from how things work in real life?

There are the standard ones, like “Outrunning a fireball” or “Ships wooshing about in space, then they blow something up with a big boom” that I hear all the time. I’ve noticed that every time someone brings home groceries, they HAVE to have a loaf of french bread sticking out of a bag, no matter who they are, where they’re from or how much money they make.

Something that bugs me to no end is when I see a show or movie that takes place in San Francisco and they feel the need to put the main characters on a cable car. No one from San Francisco uses the cable cars. There is a 45 minute line of tourists waiting to get on the cable cars. You can’t just hop on and go somewhere like a bus. They don’t go very far, very fast or to many places. While they are technically SF MUNI vehicles, they’re not useful for commuting, visiting friends or getting around town to investigate crime and there are better ways to get from A to B in San Francisco. It would be like someone from Seattle commuting to work on a Duck.

So, after cutting the blue wire, tell me what bugs you.

I listen to a progressive left-coast wingnut station, and there have been a few Yes on Prop 8 ads and other ads that most of the listeners would probably not support. At least twice an hour there is a 15 second spot of the station manager mentioning these ads (not specifically, just refering to them as “not very progressive”) then invites you to the website to see why.

You go to the site and learn that, apparently, they have to sell ads at a cut rate to any political campaign, no matter who it is, and that’s why the offending ads are there. They add that “Hopefully this will energize all of you that disagree to go out and fight.”

It’s rather clever of them, because not only does it help lessen angry/confused emails but it drives traffic to the site, which probably makes more money than the “air” part of the station. It’s probably less of an appology and more of a way to get web traffic. Way to go, Green 960 AM.

I’ve met obnoxious children. Sometimes, they’re too young to be accountable for it. Sometimes they just act that way to be cool because their parents are not around. This one was neither.

Today, a woman and her 11-ish son walked past the door of the shop. “Napa sucks ass” he shouted, into the open door. The mother looked appologetically at me and walked by. Then she doubled back 30 seconds later and entered the store and started looking around. The kid immediately began yelling “This store sucks.” I guess his mother explained to him who Michael Chiarello was because when she said “See that’s Michael Chiarello” pointing to one of the large pictures of my boss’s shapely mug. “He’s ugly and farts on himself.”, “He’s the ugliest man I’ve ever seen!” coming up to the counter and adding “And you look like him!”

He’s not the first person to mention that.  Thanks kid! We’re both handsome men. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

His mother starts trying to get him to leave. At this point, he lets out a high pitched cackle in her ear every 15 seconds. Half-heartedly appologizing, saying he’s embarassing, she heads for the door, then as she’s almost out of my miserable life, she walks over to a shelf and tries to tell the kid “Hey, grandma has this bakeware.” With one more cackle in her ear, she says “You know that hurts my ear when you do that?” He then goes from badmouthing the store to badmouthing her purple valour jogging suit, calling her a “fat purple blimp”, “a pool toy” and asking “Did you put enough helium in this morning?” Her response was an exhausted “That’s not how you talk to your mother, and she whisked him out the door, where he then flashed a gang sign to some teenagers loitering at a bistro table and said “Fa shizzle ma nizzle, my fellow gangstahs.” I’m sure this kid is going to be a chick magnet some day.

He then continued that high pitched cackle and lack-of-volume-control yelling, and I could hear it all the way down the corridor as she (hopefully) was walking down the parking lot, and (hopefully) not any other stores. Seriously, I could hear him across the entire outdoor mall.

I had a polite grin the whole time, and I must admit, I was slightly entertained on this otherwise slow night.

I almost feel sorry for her. Almost. Since you really can’t blame kids that young for what’s going on in their crazy minds, I’m going to have to put the blame on her fuzzy purple shoulders. If she can stand to go out in public with him, I can only hope her embarassment is all used up and she’s just going through the motions of being embarassed. Otherwise, she’s just equal parts sadist and masochist.

Until she said “That’s no way to talk to your mother” I assumed she was his probation officer or a councelor at whatever group home for mentally disturbed children he’s from.

Yikes.

I nearly emailed the CEO of my company a daily report talking about about a large sale of “Stainless Steel Cockware”.

Michael Chiarello: Celebrity chef, TV Personality and purveyor of fine weiner jewelry.

I give 50/50 evens on whether that would’ve gotten a chuckle or gotten me fired.

Not really… I just wanted to use that snappy one-liner.

The bloodmobile came to the shopping center where I work, so I donated on my lunch break.

Saving lives feels gooooood. *dizzy*

I just need a bottle of wine here and my day would fly by.

On a related note, I tried to encourage the other employees here to donate as well. I offered them an extra break for as long as the donation took in addition to their normal lunches and smoke breaks.

No takers.

One has lived in England, one was gay and one was too underweight to donate. For an organization that calls me constantly bitching about blood shortages, chomping at the bit to get a pint of my tasty O-Positive, they’re a little too ready to turn people away. Kind of pisses me off.

The same person who sends me emails about “Barack HUSSEIN (sic.) Obama” sent me this gem.

There is so much wrong with this Email, I can’t even begin.

But I’ll try…

First of all, it does not require that any classroom, school, teacher or child do ANYTHING in honor of Harvey Milk, or the homosexual community.

Second of all, we have holidays for all kinds of heroes. The special ones even give us days off. Why Christopher Columbus gives us a day off, while Harvey Milk Day is on the same level as Earth Day or Arbor Day is beyond me, but I’m fine with that. Cesar Chavez gets a day to honor him in this state. We don’t do much special on that day as a state. I don’t see why Harvey Milk shouldn’t get the same treatment.

Third, and I promise, while I could go on, I’ll stop with this one… third, “Homosexual indoctrination?” What the hell does that even MEAN? “It’s not only OK to be gay, children, we insist that you kiss your best friend or you get an F for the day!”

Sometimes I don’t think people realize how hateful and disgusting they sound. “The pastor said it, so it’s alright for me to say it.”

I have a “Harvey Milk for Supervisor” button. It’s probably very valuable, but I hope this bill passes so I can take it out of its frame and wear it next May 22nd.

To the person that sends me these, you know who you are. I love you like a sister, you’re a wonderful person, I’m canceling perhaps every vote you will be doing this November, and please, for pete’s sake go to Snopes.com to fact check before believing, let alone sending, this crap to darken my inbox. You’re smarter than the person who forwarded these emails to you (*cough* *cough* *douchebag boyfriend* *cough*), and you’re too smart to pass these on without a little scrutiny.

When you use those wood and wire snap traps for rats and mice, and you catch your uninvited guest, do you remove the rodent from the trap and save the trap for later, or do you throw the trap out with the animal?

I heard the trap snap early this morning and didn’t have time to dispose of the old girl. I hope she didn’t give birth yet. I don’t want little pinkies suffering, dying and stinking in the near future.

Since she’s the only rat in the house, I don’t need the traps anymore. I thought I could just throw the trap and her away when I get home. Then I thought how wasteful that is, so I thought I’d ask a stupid question to no one in particular.

The rat’s name was originally Mike, when I thought it was a dude-rat, but when I noticed she was nesting, she became Tierney if that helps your answer.

Update: Threw away the trap. She looked still pregnant. Good news.

I’m trying to get rid of a rat, so I baited 4 traps with cotton balls and peanut butter. I put them all in various places I’ve seen evidence of the rat. Near the liquor cabinet is where I think her nest is. There is about a 4 inch clearance underneath. I set a trap in front of it, and checked it this morning. It was not there. I bent down to look under the cabinet. The trap was there, sprung and robbed of bait. When the trap went off under the cabinet, it jammed the hammer against the bottom of the cabinet such that it did not completely close, so the rat could safely have the peanut butter and cotton without getting it’s neck broken.  She’d pushed it there.

Rats cannot be that smart.

That’s what that shindig/debate/evangelical handjob at the mega church seemed like.

I don’t care what Obama’s relationship with Jesus is, and no one else should either.

Also, I hear that McCain was still driving there when Obama was getting his questions. McCain seemed wittier, quicker and more ready than usual. Was he cheating? Was he fed the answers before-hand or even listening to Obama get his questions live?

And if he was in the car, how did they have a coin toss to see who goes first? What if McCain was going first? Would he have been late?

In any case, McCain seemed to have won that handily with short, concise answers free of nuance or any requirement of thought on the part of the listener.

Imagine a cedar shoe tree. The kind that goes in the shoe and shapes it while it freshens.

Now imagine that instead of cedar, they are clear acrylic and have UV lamps inside. The UV will kill a lot of the bacteria and fungus that causes the shoes to smell. Now, imagine that the plastic has a little bit of ventilation and a low voltage fan to help dry out the shoe with an exhaust vent. A completely chemical-free and reusible solution to foot-stank.

UV isn’t exactly healthy on the eyes, so you’d probably need a dark box the shoes could go in, and the lamp could only light when the box is closed. It could even be a system with two sets for couples, or people who wear dress shoes and athletic shoes in the same day. Since the lamp is inside the shoe, it wouldn’t matter if it faded the fabric. Since there’s space in the box, I could ad a place for an activated charcoal packet which would further reduce stink, and would also be reusable and long lasting, because charcoal reactivates in the sun.

Okay, how do I get my patent?

Can’t sleep.

I decided I’d try to actually make my mobile blogging feature work. I
did a lot of research. Had to set up a new gmail account. Had to tweak
a bunch of settings on the blog and the gmail account. I even had to
tweak some code in the blog page.

Now, without further ado, I will magically send an email from my
phone, where it will amazingly display on my blog!

http://asecular.com/~scott/misc/toilet.htm

This sounds made up… on the other hand, lots of true trivia sounds made up.

Are German toilets (or “Pupenbols”) actually made like this? Yuck!

I just bought the drinking water hose so the tap water won’t taste like vinyl and a Y splitter, so a second hose can be used to clean the boat, wash paint brushes and so Amelia can attack me with water without have to be so mean as to push me into the estuary.

I’m trying to figure out if it would be cheaper to replace the injector pump or have a mechanic recondition it. I’m doing research on that as I write this. I have one of these:

I am talking to the guy here who runs this Ebay store. I’m hoping he has something that will work for me because the local diesel shop (that everyone I’ve asked recommends) says it will be upwards of $800. Maybe much more.

I am also hoping this part is all we need to get the engine going.

Went to Pyramid Brewing for happy hour last night. The hot wings were wonderful. The Pyramid Burger was awesome.

Normally, when the server asks if we’d like dessert, everyone just says “No, I’m stuffed” or “I’m good.” This time the waitress suggest we look at the dessert menu (which was on the label of a large beer bottle on the table. It was there we discovered it.

Blackwatch Porter Brownie Float.

After saying it over and over as fast as we could. (Try it, it’s hard.) We ordered it.

It was delicious. Something to definitely try at home.

Amelia’s mother gave me her old Cingular Treo 680, and I managed to get it unlocked so I can use it on T-Mobile.

This thing is so freakin’ cool, I don’t know what I did before it.

Someone on TCF gave me a good idea, so I spent a few minutes drawing up a floor plan of the inside of the boat.

First I found this picture online of a cross-section of a Higgins LCVP.

Then I put a diagram of the cabin on it. I tried my best to make it to scale, but it just didn’t work out that way, but it gives the basic idea of what home looks like for us.

1.Aft head and sink
2.Shower
3.Closet
4.Two guest bunks
5.Engine access panel
6.Port entry
7.Starboard entry
8.Control panel and wheel
9.Mini bar
10.Sink, fridge and stove
11.Dining area
12.Closet
13.Captain’s head
14.Captain’s bunk