Wang Free Friday? A Dream Deferred No Longer

I was reminded of my supreme awesomeness while reading Fart Party (long story but I enjoy pretty much any web comic that contains dumb jokes by smart people) and decided to kinda phone in this post with a link to evidence of my supreme bossness.

So yeah, I'm resting on my laurels, but they are some pretty fat laurels, indeed.

The Washington Moment

People may talk about the Hollywood moment being rather existential in a way like realizing you just snorted coke off the same tits that Johnny Depp did in that one movie where he wore a fat suit and snorted coke off some tits, or realizing that you are watching some bums that live in the dumpster behind the Warner lot act out a scene from Space Jam but they are really the voice actors from Space Jam. I have heard a few people describe their "I've arrived-DC style" moments and they usually run like this:

"So I was desperate for a bathroom and this meeting just won't fucking end. Like I give a shit about farm subsidies when I've got a turtle head sprouting. I am just glad it was a conference call, so I could mute my microphone when I needed to let one rip. Anyway, so the meeting call ends and I scoot out of the office, doing that funky walk you do when you really have to clench like your pants' life depends on it. I get to the bathroom and it's full. All of these fucking douchebags in blue shirts and khaki pants are standing around the urinals like it's a goddam fencing competition and I can see that all three stalls are occupado. No foot tapping allowed, though. HAHA! So finally two representatives, they were wearing dark blue suits so probably Reps or something, get out of the far two stalls and I bolt for the first one. I clean off the seat and struggle with the little paper ring thingy that is supposed to protect you from the Chilean Buttslug or whatever and sit down. I am slowly relaxing and about to expel some serious waste when someone comes stomping into the bathroom and runs into the empty stall next to mine. He had nice wingtips on and did not bother with the paper donut. He was in such a hurry that he wasn't even bothering to hold his pants off the floor. I could see the tag on the pants, Armani, bro, and they are probably soaking up water and piss off the floor and the dude just lets one rip. I mean, I have had a chile relleno with green chili salsa with horchata and all that awesome stuff go right through me before, but this was the foulest, most unholy, ripping-the-fabric-of-space-time shitting that I have never heard before. It was like that scene in Not Another Teen Movie, except real and right next door. This poor fucker must have eaten the whole cow. I can see his feet shaking with each burst of explosive fecal expulsion. Needless to say, when the smell hit me, I got all dizzy and reeled like I had been hit in the face with a hammer. Fucking nasty. I clenched up mid-shit, it was so bad. It was hideous. I had to concentrate to squeeze out the remainder. By the time I finished, diarrhea dude next was done as well. So I am washing my hands and then I look up at the guy and it's KARL FUCKING ROVE. HAHA!"

That probably could have been a shorter example.

I have had my own Washington Moments like the time Donald Rumsfeld's motorcade forced me off the road or the time some puke got me fired from my night job. These two events are both definitively DC in their provenance but a recent event has topped them, Federally speaking: I invited a woman to have an extravagant dinner with me and a lawyer working for the Senate Ethics Committee has said that it would violate Congressional Ethics Rules if she were to accept the offer.

I was just cockblocked by the Senate Ethics Committee. How can you possibly get more Washington than that? I could take the libertarian perspective and feign indignance at the interruption of my free enterprise, but I am enjoying the hilarity of the government's response to my apparently fearsome wang.

UPDATE 11:02 AM: I hereby declare that "I got cockblocked by the Senate Ethics Committee" is my phrase and I will put it on a shirt and you can buy it from me. In other words, dibs and no stealing.

UPDATE 4:48 PM: The Federal Government may not bow to terrorists but it will grant my demands. The Chief Counsel of the Senate Ethics Committee has granted approval to my date to accept my offer of dinner. ALL FEAR THE MIGHTY WANG. MY WANG HAS BEATEN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, TRULY IT IS EPIC. Incidentally, I may now have an unfortunately unfounded level of regard for myself. I still plan on selling t-shirts, but they may now feature something about my wang's victory, possibly pictorial in nature.

Coffee Question

While making the office a pot of coffee this morning, I remembered something from my childhood. I was using both nozzles on the water cooler to fill the carafe. I had never thought about it before but assumed that it was faster than if I had only used one nozzle. I asked myself, "is this only a happy delusion or does the pot fill faster?" One of my brothers had once told me that using two straws in the same drink will not allow me to drink it any faster. I think I was around six or seven and believed everything they told me. Don't ask me about asparagus.

Is this true? I don't know. I haven't had my coffee yet.

In unrelated news, this is irritating.

The cultural and behavioral norms of virtual worlds and gaming are generally unstudied. Therefore, Reynard will seek to identify the emerging social, behavioral and cultural norms in virtual worlds and gaming environments. The project would then apply the lessons learned to determine the feasibility of automatically detecting suspicious behavior and actions in the virtual world.

I do have every confidence that this program will result in the largest brain melting yet experienced by government officials. Screaming Fist will look like a walk in the park after Project Reynard. I forsee agents wandering the halls of power, unshaven, unwashed, unsane, and constantly muttering "lol lulz wtf omgwtfbbqpwnd pwndpwndpwnd" until finally put down by the very institution that created them. Maybe added a caffeinated corn and milk solid to my coffee was not the best idea this morning. It isn't Tuesday.

In somewhat related news, I bought some books last week: Dark Heresy, 1984, and Brave New World. There is a further level of relation within all three that I found amusing. Some might even say it was subversively amusing.

UPDATE: The asparagus thing is unrelated to pee pee. I'll detail it tomorrow.

As Close to an Official Apology as You'll Get

I missed Razor. I was all set to enjoy it and then forgot that it was that week when it was.

Running of the Moose?

If they had been moose, or meese or whatevs, the streets would have run red with the blood of the perhaps less than innocent.

The Computer Whisperer

Given: Computers are rational beings.
Given: Humans are irrational beings.

Therefore: ...

I have no idea why I am able to solve some problems and not others. I also have no idea why my solution "Let's right-click it and see what happens" works so often.

Doing My Homework

I fucked up my homework assignment for last Wednesday's editing class. I forgot about it over the long weekend and left it to try and do on the bus to class. We had been assigned an Aviation Magazine (or some such title) article to proofread at the lowest level of authority. This level of authority means that we query the author instead of researching and making changes and identify errors in spelling and grammar. We were advised to look for the really big mistakes more than the smaller mistakes, but the smaller mistakes are important as well.

In the second paragraph, the article said that Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) were used in Vietnam. I thought this sounded bogus, so I circled it to be queried.¹ I continued reading and scanning but only got to the end of the first page before I had to stop as the train had filled up and I had to fight to get off at my stop.

After being chided by the instructor for not completing the assignment, I felt like an ass. I was saved, sort of, when the instructor learned that most of the class had slacked on this assignment as well and gave us another week to work on it. I glanced at the article during the class break after our proofreading marks quiz and spotted the big mistake she had kept trying to get us to notice: the article has no conclusion.² The article cruises on discussing the merits, flaws, uses, and designs of UAVs but ends without a conclusion two paragraphs after starting a new topic in the UAV discussion. This article was not a draft, it was a final copy that was printed. Somebody got righteously shafted for this one.

1 Having just searched "UAVs used in Vietnam", I am surprised to say that I was wrong about that one. You learn something new every day.
2 I am still not sure whether I like editing and proofreading because it is a whole career that will be spent telling people how wrong they are or because it is a vital role in crafting pieces of art like Motherless Brooklyn or 1984, both of which I happen to reading now.³
3 I am also reading From the Notebooks of Doctor Brain. Fun stuff.

I Like It

I was doing some actual work on Amazon and found these. I cracked up a little.

A Serious Case of the Funnies

I have some funny stories to relate at some point in the coming, supposedly unbusy weekend. I have the feeling that I have forgotten something that I said I would do this weekend.

Our Top Stories for the Six O'Clock News Hour:
The Funny Story About the Pittsburgh Greyhound Station JAG Officer, the Genius, and the Old Man Who Dated a Hermaphrodite.
The Funny Story About the Cute Girl on the Greyhound Bus Who Hit on the Genius Because She Wanted to Cheat on Her Lying Husband with As Many Men as Possible in One Weekend, Or Why I Started Turning Down Offers of Sex.
The Funny Story About the Thing I Did One Time That I Can't Quite Remember at the Moment.
A Celebrity Dream Cameo That Also Heavily Featured Zombies That I only Half Remembered.
Stories of Guitar Hero.
Another One About a Thing.
A Celebrity Dream Cameo Featuring Me and The Narrator From E! True Hollywood Stories.
A Story About the Patriarchy and How It Affects My Penis, Or A Not-So Funny Story About Going to the Doctor's Office.

Incidentally, I went to the Doctor's office to start the ball rolling on having some guy I've never met before grab my balls and possibly stick something up my bum. Some firefighters on TV told me that it was pretty important to have some random person check out your prostate. Physicals are fucking weird, man. That's not all I have to say about that. Any time an M.D. says the word "syphilis" around me, I am going to flinch, even if it is in the sentence, "While we're screening you for everything else, let's toss in a syphilis screen as well." Now, I have no reason to be alarmed about any STD or STI because I am a careful dude like that, but while I have insurance, I figured I would take advantage of it and because I thought I didn't have enough to get neurotic about and thought I would throw in some scary fucking tests. There's a couple of jokes in there and some genuine nail-chewing.

Narp

I have seen this movie and all I can say about it is that I was laughing so hard that I could not summarize the plot. I think it went something like this:

There's this woman and her robot and they run around and do some shit and then run around some other place and then the get captured but then they get away and then the Colossus of Rhodes attacks them on a beach and she's wearing this space bikini for the whole movie but never gets naked and then David Hasselhoff shows up with a Lightsabers and the floating head from Zardoz but it's a mask and he shoots lasers from his eyes and then the movie ends. It might have been in Italian. I was sober. Honest.

This interview with the writer-director is a fascinating look at the story of Star Crash. For certain, um, expansive definitions of fascinating.

In a more personal note, I am sorry but there will be no Totall Tarantula Tuesday today as I am not free to tap into that well at present.

It's Frigging True

I can't leave work for one long weekend without everything going to shit. The frigging DSL modem went offline due to a brownout or blackout and the network drive also decided to behave rather naughtily as well. I am not amused. My desk is a mess, I've got reports due in an hour, shit's all fucked, and my hair is just not right today.

I did get to check out that Cal State/Stanford marching band Nintendo thingy and that was cool.

In other news about things that only exist because we allow them to, Faye and Sven totally did it and I called that shit a long time ago. Like six months ago or something.

The Cookie Monster interview on NPR's In Character Blog is worth every glorious second.

I'm a Peaceful Man, But When Angered

I am quite a threat to those under four feet tall:

I can take out 28 five year olds before they drag me down with their small hands and bitey teeth.

Update 2/17/08: I saw this thing on Nikkos' site and I was bored and thought it was vaguely amusing. I did not have to deal with any dating site advertising to take it. Sorry about that. I would never knowingly endorse a dating site, I think they are incredibly lame.

I'll Take Ferris Bueller For 800, Alex

This is all such utter crap. There is no excuse for either of the -isms.

Who's in the Kitchen With Genius?

I knew I had to cook something because Hallmark tells me so and because I said I would a few days ago. Unfortunately, I left the pork chops in the freezer this morning and had only three year old couscous and leftover curry in my fridge. I had no ideas for a meal and little time, but for some reason I had a hankering for wienerschnitzel. Veal is expensive, so I grabbed a pork loin roast that was less than ten dollars, flour, eggs, some salad fixings, and some frozen green beans.

I made the salad, threw the beans in some water to boil, and was flattening the chops I had sliced off the roast when she arrived. I mixed two eggs with a little soy milk because the knowing without knowing part of my brain said I should and I was pretty much operating entirely on that bizarre portion of my grey matter's unspoken and rarely heard advice. I think it may be the snake part of my brain and I don't think I am a parselmouth. If anything, I'm the spider whisperer.

I digress. I soaked the flattened pork slabs in the egg mixture and dropped them in the flour and spice mix. I made sure they were thickly coated and tossed the slabs in the hot olive oil. I cooked three schnitzels and then mixed the flour with the eggs and made a schnitzel-pancake. Pretty frigging good for a guy with no recipe and no prior experience cooking this.

The only odd thing about the night was the question, "Were you trying to make a dinner with my three favorite foods?" I have no idea what she was talking about, I wanted a schnitzel and some green beans. I was also desperate for a salad after three nights of curry and four days of bananas and honey on whole wheat bread. I hate bananas.

So yeah, the Tom Petty Was Right sign is hanging right next to the Homeric Ideal tabard.

Hallmark Continues to Annoy Me

I despise Valentine's Day and have since Kindergarten, but this shit is hilarious.

And Now For Something Less Political Than Yesterday

Also, with disapointingly less pornography. Let's all talk about computers and how they can drive a person mad, both the angry kind and the new jacket kind. My computer started working randomly on Monday night. The circumstances under which it died were odd enough but this is just damn peculiar. The day it died, I had booted it up, checked my email, and logged onto World of Warcraft. Two minutes later, it seized in mid-flight and would not respond to keyboard commands or reboot. I turned it off with the hard switch on the back, waited a few minutes, and tried to boot it. It would get about 2 seconds into the sequence after I hit the power button and then stall out. I blew out the dust and tried again.

After conversations with friends, I suspected that the power source might have died and the hard drives didn't have enough juice to spin up. When I tried again, they hummed like they were spinning and had the right kind of vibrations, so no dice on that idea. I then figured that it was good and broke and it was probably the chip and just left it to sit and not-think about what it did. Over the next week, I tried once or twice to get it to work, to no avail.

This past Monday night, I tried again and it booted up fine and has worked for the last two days. One of the Brothers of Indeterminate Number thinks I may have had a bit of dust that caused a jump between two capacitors or resistors, possibly even a mis-aligned samoflange, causing the computer to stop startup. By not turning it on for five days, I let the power drain out of the electro-flimflam and the sparking-wangdoodle and the computer was able to boot properly gain. This sounds more like magic then the way computers usually behave. I suspect witchcraft and I now who to blame.

Emu Party Still Strong in the Congressional Chambers

First, the Democratic Party:
Akaka (D-HI), Yea
Baucus (D-MT), Yea
Biden (D-DE), Yea
Bingaman (D-NM), Yea
Boxer (D-CA), Yea
Brown (D-OH), Yea
Byrd (D-WV), Yea
Cantwell (D-WA), Yea
Cardin (D-MD), Yea
Casey (D-PA), Yea
Dodd (D-CT), Yea
Dorgan (D-ND), Yea
Durbin (D-IL), Yea
Feingold (D-WI), Yea
Harkin (D-IA), Yea
Kennedy (D-MA), Yea
Kerry (D-MA), Yea
Klobuchar (D-MN), Yea
Lautenberg (D-NJ), Yea
Leahy (D-VT), Yea
Levin (D-MI), Yea
Menendez (D-NJ), Yea
Murray (D-WA), Yea
Obama (D-IL), Yea
Reed (D-RI), Yea
Reid (D-NV), Yea
Schumer (D-NY), Yea
Tester (D-MT), Yea
Whitehouse (D-RI), Yea
Wyden (D-OR), Yea

And now the First National Party for the Preservation of Emuteurotomy:
Bayh (D-IN), Nay
Carper (D-DE), Nay
Clinton (D-NY), Not Voting
Conrad (D-ND), Nay
Feinstein (D-CA), Nay
Inouye (D-HI), Nay
Johnson (D-SD), Nay
Kohl (D-WI), Nay
Landrieu (D-LA), Nay
Lieberman (ID-CT), Nay
Lincoln (D-AR), Nay
McCaskill (D-MO), Nay
Mikulski (D-MD), Nay
Nelson (D-FL), Nay
Nelson (D-NE), Nay
Pryor (D-AR), Nay
Rockefeller (D-WV), Nay
Salazar (D-CO), Nay
Stabenow (D-MI), Nay
Webb (D-VA), Nay

Thanks a lot.
Feingold gets it right, again.
Posting style totally stolen from fish.

Still Not Enough Room For All The Porn

Scientists continue to lag behind in pornography storage capacity. In fact, leading UN scientists estimate that given the rate of porn production and current storage techniques, the world stands to lose an estimated 45 minutes of vintage pornographic 8mm and 16mm film by the year 2012.

"If we don't act now and take drastic steps to digitize those remaining 6 or 7 home videos from 1967, we could lose them forever," says Dr. Hugh Johnson, Chief Erotica Archivist of the Library of Congress, in an address at the AVN Awards. "As I'm sure we're all aware, the types of film used in the 60s and 70s becomes very brittle with age and must be handled delicately, rather like breast implants. The longer we wait, the likelihood increases that we will never be able to again enjoy those blurry and grainy images of hairy people humping on a shag carpet in a finished basement in Moosehead Neck, Wisconsin. We must secure funding to preserve all of our great nation's wonderful fucking history."

Dr. Johnson received the largest standing ovation at the entire conference.

Sources Say: You're Wrong, Genuis

According to a source on the Hill: "You're wrong. I checked with someone who checked with someone working with the Senate Finance Committee[!!!] and they said that the stimulus check will not be taxable. Democrats are better at this then Republicans." [Emphasis mine cuz, wow]

So, my earlier post about this topic was wrong. I received that information from an H&R Block person when I was inquiring about the cost per tax return. I'll be more thorough with my facts in the future and I'll file on my own this year, thanks!

Incidentally and totally unrelated to any stimulus plan that may or may not ever reach my wallet, I dropped a wad on a new home computer and then my old one started working last night. It's a frigging conspiracy, I tell ya! The graphic rendering on the new one is going to melt my face with dual 8500s.

I Got Kucinich and Obama

Who will you get? I know someone who got Huckabee. That's what being Catholic does fo ya.

Economic Stimulus? I am Unsurprisingly Not Stimulated

However, that may be due to my ricockulously tight leather hotpants.

Everyone make sure that you record the stimulus check as income when you are filing your taxes in 2009. What? You didn't know that you had to report it? Oh, yes you do. They get you coming and going. Especially on the phone while complaining about your treatment in Gitmo.

Addendum: The H&R Block employee who informed me of this may have been incorrect. I'll do some research and update.

Video Response to Cap'n Trollypants

Bring it, chump.

With a great many thanks to Robola and Pants Crew.

WEstern Thought Wednesday: Changing Realities

"We used it against these three detainees because of the circumstances at the time," Hayden told the Senate Intelligence Committee. "There was the belief that additional catastrophic attacks against the homeland were inevitable. And we had limited knowledge about al-Qaida and its workings. Those two realities have changed."

Lt.Gen. Hayden is being pretty clear in this statement. He is saying that waterboarding is bad and considered torture, unless you really need the information and then reality distorts and waterboarding can no longer be regarded torture until reality undistorts.

Of course, if you are a group of individuals that like to sit together in your gym shorts smoking fine Midwestern hash while singing songs and pontificating on the nature of laws and legalities and how a can we really define a country by some line on a map that isn't there when you actually go to the border and pick up coke from that dude on the other side of the invisible line that only really separates our minds, man, then you might come up with this sort of defense. It depends what the meaning of is is. I mean, well, you know what I mean, right? I mean, like, come on, bro. How can we be breaking the law if we don't agree on what the law says? You say waterboarding is torture and I say it isn't. Let's just agree to disagree and go get ripped to the tits, broseph!

Or let's not. We see the same shitty excuse on parade against the global consensus of scientists on climate change. The Bush administration's behavior is killing what's left of our democracy. They have decided time and again that they do not need the Constitution of the United States to govern their actions. Every single time anyone has acted to limit the rampantly unethical and illegal actions of this insane Executive, they have countered with nothing more than a legal-speak version of "No. NONONONONONONONO!" This does not set a dangerous precedent for the next president, this destroys our government. I am not only worried about Bush being able to wiretap every phone in the country, I am worried about Obama or Clinton or McCain or Romney or the 46th through 52nd presidents doing the same thing. I am worried about every following president making signing statements that nullify every law passed. I am worried about a Congress that refuses to stop this nonsense. I am worried about a Judiciary that presides over the erosion of the constitutional checks and balances. I am worried about our future as a country.

Either the Best or Absolute Worst

I am drawn to say that this is sublime. Or subliminal.

Lots of Differences

I am still torn about the primaries. On the one hand, our political system needs massive reform since non-swing states don't matter in Federal elections and our voting machines are as likely to work as they are not and on the other hand...well actually, it is hard to get past that first hand. However, there are lots of people out there that don't have two hands on which to judge a candidate because they were maimed by land mines, cluster bombs and other unexploded ordinance that have been tossed around willy-nilly by irresponsible nations.

This isn't an issue that really affects Americans because we have not had the distinct displeasure of hosting a modern war on our continent. We don't have to worry about losing a limb when we go camping or having the car explode when taking the scenic route. I am sure that Senator Clinton has some reason for voting the way she did, but I don't know if I care to listen to it. Votes like these seem simple to us, but we aren't the Senators. We just vote for them in the hopes that they represent us. As a citizen without a vote or a Senator, I hope that all Senators act in the interests of all citizens.
The Amendment
International Campaign to Ban Landmines

Pooter Broken Again

/sigh

For Your Approval: The Federal Budget

In the words of one Hill staffer who shall remain anonymous, "It's bullshit."