Del.icio.us bookmarking site gets a major overhaul
The Del.icio.us bookmarking site has gone under major overhaul. For one thing, they changed the spelling to plain old Delicious. It’s about time. If you’ve been reading this blog for any period of time, you know I am quite a stickler for spelling.
That of course is not true. I am a terrible speller. If anything, my lack of a spelling ability makes me extremely annoyed when companies attempt to be creative by dicking up the title of their website. I don’t know who they were trying to impress by placing a couple periods where they didn’t belong, but I was not impressed.
I was not amused.
Does Brett Favre want to return to the NFL because he needs the money?
WTMJ-TV Channel 4 in Milwaukee is reporting that the Green Bay Packers offered Brett Favre $20 million paid out over the next 10 years to stay retired. Could they know something that the rest of us don’t? I think most people believed that the reason Brett Favre wanted to un-retire and come back and play quarterback in the NFL was because he still had the burning desire to compete.
What if he just needs the money?
It seems to me that if a guy just wants to play, offering him money to sit at home and watch Judge Judy would be a complete waste of time. With that said, the Green Bay Packers thought it was worth making the offer.
I would think with all of the commercial endorsements Brett Favre does, money wouldn’t be a problem. Unless of course being the pitchman for heartburn medication and blue jeans sold at Wal-Mart doesn’t pay a lot.
Report: Packers offer Favre $20 million to stay home (Milwaukee Journal Sentinal)
Michael Wilbon is not a fan of big boy pants
Evidently Washington Post columnist and ESPN PTI co-host Michael Wilbon hates wearing long paints in the summer time. Knowing first hand just how hot it is right now in the Washington DC area, I really can’t blame him. In fact, I’m wearing shorts right now too.
This reminds me of when I had my high school senior portrait taken. I too was wearing a jacket and tie above the waist and OP corduroy shorts and Vans slip-on shoes below it. Good times!
The Only Thing Michael Wilbon Hates More Than Sports Bloggers Is Pants (Mister Irrelevant)
Orson Scott Card hates gay people that want to settle down and get married
Science fiction writer Orson Scott Card has his secret Mormon holy underpants in a bunch over the idea of allowing gay people to marry. Marriage, that sacred holy union enjoyed by the likes of Britney Spears and Keven Federline and Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley.
Orson Scott Card does not like gay marriage and he chose to argue his views in the pages of the Mormon Times. How brave of him.
Here is some of what Orson Scott Card had to say:
These judges are making new law without any democratic process; in fact, their decisions are striking down laws enacted by majority vote.
No, that’s not what is happening. Massachusetts and California Judges have ruled against laws that discriminate against gay people. That is what judges are supposed to do. They strike down laws that discriminate against people because of their race, sex, religion, or sexual orientation. It doesn’t matter if a majority of voters agreed to deny rights to gay people. There is a difference between a Democracy and mob rule.
Remember how rapidly gay marriage has become a requirement. When gay rights were being enforced by the courts back in the ’70s and ’80s, we were repeatedly told by all the proponents of gay rights that they would never attempt to legalize gay marriage.
It took about 15 minutes for that promise to be broken.
Who promised him that? It’s not that people want to legalize gay marriage. Those of us on the pro-gay marriage side just think that the government shouldn’t enact laws that make it illegal. There is a difference.
My wife and I enjoy the rights and privileges afforded to us because we are married. She is my legal next of kin and I am her’s. If I am ever in a life threatening accident and decisions have to be made concerning my care and treatment, not only will my wife be allowed to remain at my side, she will be allowed to make those decisions. The reason for this is because she and I are married.
This is only one of the many rights and privileges bestowed on married couples. Gay people in committed relationships love the person they are with just as much as I love my wife. Why should my wife and I get rights and privileges that committed gay couples don’t? I hate the fact that we deny this basic right to gay couples.
It’s embarrassing.
And for the record, if I am ever in a situation where my wife has to make a decision about my medical care, I want her to keep me alive any way that medical science allows. Not only do I want to be hooked up to machines, I want them to invent new machines just to keep me going. I want to live!
The choice is her’s though. She is my wife. She has earned the right to unplug me.
‘Extreme Makeover’ house facing foreclosure
ABC has a TV showed called Extreme Makeover where they take the home of a supposed deserving family and remodel it. By that I mean that they totally demolish the old house and build something totally new. They do this with the aid of thousands of volunteers and they do it in only a week. No expense is spared. No corner is cut. Nothing is too lavish when it comes to the remodeled home.
It appears that simple greed got to one of the beneficiaries of these extremely made over homes. From the AP (via Yahoo!):
After the Harper family used the two-story home as collateral for a $450,000 loan, it’s set to go to auction on the steps of the Clayton County Courthouse Aug. 5. The couple did not return phone calls Monday, but told WSB-TV they received the loan for a construction business that failed.
I wonder how the Harper family qualified for the makeover. They normally select families with extreme sob stories. Families where mom is dying of cancer and the six kids all have allergies to plastic. I also wonder how long it took them to turn around and take out a loan against the home.
I guess I should feel sorry for these people, but I simply don’t. Not even a little bit. I do feel sorry for the thousands of volunteers that put in the hours of hard work building these people a mini-mansion.
I bet that wont happen again.
The life of Vader
This is only one of the photos from the flickr photoset “…the life of vader“. I’ve never been very good at interpreting art. That goes double for dork art. Not that I’m even sure this is art.
Religious group terrorizes Hagerstown residents with giant scary abortion photos
People from the anti-choice group Face the Truth came to Hagerstown yesterday and terrorized people with giant scary abortion photos. Hagerstown is only one stop on their 15 city terror tour. Who knows, maybe they will make a stop in your city too.
My biggest problem with groups like this is that they take photos from a medical procedure and blow them up to 100 times the actual size to make them look like something they are not. They then wave these giant posters in your face and demand (demand!) you look at them.
It doesn’t matter who you are.
It doesn’t matter how old you are.
It doesn’t matter how young you are.
They will force you to look at their ghastly pictures.
It’s as though their right to make you look at ginned up photos is more important than your right not to see the photos.
Some members of Face the Truth even dragged their young children to the event and made them hold signs denouncing a woman’s right to choose.
The members of Face the Truth and other similar anti-choice groups want you to think that a fetus is the same thing as a human baby. The reality is that the two are not the same. Just because a gigantic posterized photo of a fetus might look like a human baby doesn’t make it an actual human baby. Have you ever seen a pig fetus? They too kind of look like a human baby. The same thing applies to a monkey fetus. They look remarkably similar to a human fetus.
That doesn’t mean they are human, even if they look like they are human. Looks can be deceiving.
What has Troy Polamalu being doing this off-season?
I don’t know what Pittsburgh Steelers safety Troy Polamalu has been doing during the off-season, but he needs to stop doing it. Though I commend him for finally getting a haircut, he has really let himself go.
FCC to rule against Comcast
It looks as though the FCC isn’t waiting around for Congress to pass specific net neutrality laws. From everyone’s favorite supermarket tabloid The Wallstreet Journal:
The Federal Communications Commission will rule that the cable giant violated federal policy by deliberately preventing some customers from sharing videos online via file-sharing services like BitTorrent, agency officials said. The company has acknowledged it slowed some traffic, but said it was necessary to prevent a few heavy users from overburdening its network.
I didn’t even know there was such a thing as violating federal policy. I thought something was either a federal law or it wasn’t. I do think it is a case of fraud when you sell someone something called unlimited broadband Internet and then proceed to limit it.
My letter to the Herald-Mail over their editorial concerning Kelly Cromer
I blogged a while back about the local newspaper’s war against one of Hagerstown’s city elected councilmembers, Kelly Cromer. I read an editorial that was even more of a hack job then normal. I decided to temporarily lift my self-imposed ban on writing more letters to the newspaper. I originally blogged that if the newspaper didn’t publish my letter, I would go ahead and publish it here.
I don’t think they ever published my letter, so here it is:
I read the editorial published June 24 (Cromer’s apology for incident isn’t enough) and I was amazed at what I read. By demanding that Hagerstown City Councilwoman Kelly Cromer prove that her version of events concerning the May 26 traffic stop are true, you are in a very real sense demanding that she prove her own innocence. That’s not the way that it works. If Cromer committed some type crime or abuse of power, it’s up to her accusers – mainly the Hagerstown Police Department and the Herald-Mail — to prove her guilt. So far that hasn’t happened.
Much of what we know about this traffic stop was learned from reading a special supplemental report written by the officer that stopped Cromer, a supplemental report that was written the day after the actual traffic stop. We know from reading the supplemental report that the officer had to call his supervisor during the traffic stop and ask for advice. I wonder, did this officer receive any more advice the next day while writing the supplemental report? If so, how many people helped him write the supplemental report? Do any of them drive city owned take-home vehicles?
Cromer made no public mention of this incident until three weeks later when a reporter from the Herald-Mail contacted her while she was on vacation. The reporter asked if she believed there was a vendetta against her and she answered in the affirmative. Cromer didn’t choose that word “vendetta” to describe the situation, it was your reporter.
What I find to be the most peculiar thing – and that’s saying a lot — about this whole controversy is how the Herald-Mail found out about the traffic stop in the first place. It would appear that someone from the Hagerstown Police Department or some other city employee leaked the story to the Herald-Mail. Three weeks after the fact. It appears to me that this was done to make Cromer look bad in the eyes of her constituents. She is certainly taking a lot of heat for a word she herself never said. What would motivate someone to do such a thing? Maybe just maybe it was in response to her suggestion that the city investigate the validity of the take-home vehicle program. I can’t help but wonder if the person who leaked the story to the newspaper drives a city owned take-home vehicle. Since we will never know the identity of this person, we are left with only our suspicions.
Rick Rottman
Hagerstown
iTunes Folder Watch for Windows
This nice little free program automatically monitors any folder you tell it to for new music files. It then automatically adds any new music tracks to your iTunes library.
If only both teams could lose
The Yankees play Boston tonight on the ESPN. I can’t ever figure out which team I hate the most. The Yankees are the Yankees. The Red Sox are kind of like the Yankees version 2.0. Just like the Yankees, they rely on high priced free agents to win championships.
Boston fans are even more obnoxious then Yankees fans. That’s something I didn’t even know was possible.
The game tonight will be called by Jon Miller and Joe Morgan. These two men are as complete polar opposites as two people can be. Miller is one of the best play by play men in baseball while Joe Morgan is semi-mentally retarded. You know that guy at work that is constantly saying things and telling stories that are just not true?
Joe Morgan is just like that guy.
(Photo: Deadspin)
Sirius and XM allowed to merge
I’m not sure what took so long, but the FCC has finally agreed to allow Sirius and XM to merge into one satellite company.
I used to have XM, but I got rid of both my radios and switched to Sirius a few months ago. I decided that I would rather listen to Howard Stern in the mornings then Opie & Anthony. I felt like their show had gone down the tubes since they made the jump back to regular radio. When they weren’t going to commercial, they were complaining about other radio shows getting better ratings then them. It got boring.
Howard Stern on the other hand has been Howard Stern. He’s as great as he has ever been. In fact, he’s actually better then ever.
The music channels on Sirius are better then the music channels on XM. I find myself listening to a lot of channel 22 First Wave. They play a lot of classic alternative and new wave. I also enjoy channel 29 Punk Rock. They play nothing but new and vintage puck rock.
One of the things I don’t understand about this merger is one of the stipulations forced on Sirius and XM by the FCC. The two companies had to agree that after they merge, they will not raise prices for three years. If the government can do that with satellite radio, why can’t they do that with gas?
Mamma Mia
I don’t get this movie. It’s supposedly based on the music of ABBA. Being that the story does not revolve around a queen that dances, I don’t really understand how ABBA music is involved.
I only know one ABBA song.
From what I have been told, the movie centers around a 20-year old girl who is about to be married. She wants to be walked down the aisle by her father. The only problem — if you forget for a moment that a 20-year old child so too young to get married — is that she doesn’t know who her father is.
She was raised by a single mother. She didn’t grow up with a father.
She doesn’t know who her father is because her mother doesn’t know who exactly impregnated her 20 years ago. Evidently in 1988 she had unprotected sex with three different men on or around the moment her daughter was conceived. Classy!
I remember 1988. People were more then a little freaked out over something called AIDS. This was when most people finally stopped calling it the Gay Cancer and realized that AIDS or HIV, the virus that caused AIDS, was something everyone needed to worry about. It was something everyone, gay or straight, needed to protect themselves against.
This meant people were starting to be more responsible when it came to having sex. They were refraining from having unprotected sex with multiple partners.
Maybe the world that Mamma Mia takes place is some sort of alternate world that is free of HIV or other life threatening sexually transmitted diseases.
Then again, maybe Mamma was just a skanky crack whore.
Newsarama wins an award for journalism?
Word out of the San Diego Comic-Con (the cool kids call it SDCC) is that the comic book website Newsarama won an Eisner award for Best Comics-Related Periodical/Journalism. I normally don’t put much stock into awards, but seriously, Newsarama, an award for journalism?
It seems to me that whoever decided Newsarama should win an award for journalism either does not know the meaning of the word journalism or didn’t get wind of the recent Heroes Con panel entitled, “Covering Comics: Criticism, Reportage, and Gossip“. Newsarama’s co-founder and current editor Matt Brady attended the panel and made some startling comments.
Among the many things Brady said was that there had been times where he had to think about the long term picture before breaking a story. He admitted that he sometimes worried about repercussions from the publishers if he (Newsarama) was the first to break certain stories. He said that sometimes he would ask himself if it was more prudent to “hang back” and allow certain stories to break elsewhere — like a blog or a rumor column — and comment on the story then.
I would think that if you are going to hang back and allow someone else break a story so that you don’t get flack from the Marvel or DC, you are not a comic book journalist. You are certainly not an award winning comic book journalist.
Kevin Smith to do 3-issue miniseries for DC Comics
Filmmaker Kevin Smith is returning to comics with a 3-issue miniseries for DC Comics. It will feature the villain Onomatopoeia. Not only was I not familiar with the character, I didn’t even know what the word onomatopoeia referred to.
Like I have to do with a lot of DC Comics characters, I had to consult the good people of Wikipedia.
I like Kevin Smith as much as one heterosexual man can like another heterosexual man, but he has a reputation of being kind of late with his comic book writing. Not that he is the only celebrity comic book writer that enjoys that particular reputation. Newsarama reports that DC executive editor Dan DiDio told the audience at the DC panel at the San Diego Comic-Con that all three of Smith’s scripts have already been completed and turned in.
Robert Novak hits a man in a crosswalk
It looks like conservative commentator Robert Novak has one more nugget to add to his legacy. First he was the guy known for dropping the S-bomb on CNN and storming off the set. He then outed a covert CIA agent and ignited a big mess resulting in the prosecution, conviction, and subsequent Presidential commutation of a prison sentence of a man named “Scooter”. Now he has struck a man in a crosswalk with his car in downtown Washington D.C.
Novak, who is 77-years “young”, claims that he didn’t know he had struck a pedestrian in a crosswalk. After hitting the man, Novak continued driving. He had to be chased down by another man, David Bono, on a bicycle who had witnessed the accident.
Bono dismisses the claim from Novak that he didn’t know he had struck a pedestrian. Bona told a reporter from WJLA TV that the vicim was “splayed on his windshield” and would have been impossible to miss.
Novak was slapped with a $50 ticket and allowed to go on his way. That’s more then he got when he leaked the name of a covert CIA agent.
Woman declares that sitting in urine-soaked airplane seat is disgusting
What’s even worse then flying to Boston? Having to sit in an Air Tran seat soaked in someone’s urine. From WCVB TV
“I was sitting maybe 30 seconds to minute and realized that my pants were soaked,” Jennifer Castellano said.
Castellano said she went to the lavatory to check her jeans and long sweater.
“I then realized I was saturated in urine from the smell,” she said.
Castellano said a flight attendant told her someone had gone to the bathroom in the seat during the previous flight.
Jennifer Castellano told WCVB that she had to take off her urine soaked clothing and wrap herself in a blanket. She then sat in a different seat.
Upon arriving in Boston, Air Tran staff refused to retrieve her luggage. She was forced to walk through the airport wearing her blanket so she could retrieve her luggage and change into clean, urine-free clothing. The Air Tran personal claimed that it was against federal regulations for airline personnel to retrieve passenger luggage. Really? How about a federal regulation against allowing a passenger to sit in a pee soaked seat?
John Edwards has a mistress?
The National Enquirer is reporting that John Edwards not only has a mistress, 31-year old Rielle Hunter, but also a love child with that mistress.
It would be easy to just dismiss the story as being nothing more then supermarket tabloid who-ha, but the National Enquirer is usually right about this kind of stuff. I can’t imagine the National Enquirer reporting this unless they had proof that it is true.
The linked article is funny in that it documents National Enquirer reporters confronting Edwards at a Los Angeles hotel at 2:40 a.m. Edwards was reportedly leaving Rielle Hunter’s hotel room. The article states that Edwards ducked into a men’s room until hotel security could escort him out and away from the reporters.
New Ben Bova novel on the horizon
The science fiction novel Mars Life, the next book in the science fiction Grand Tour series by Ben Bova hits shelves on August 5. If you place an order with Amazon before it is releases, you will get an extra 5% discount.
Ben Bova is the only author I have an automatic buy policy on when it comes to their books. As soon as one of his books is published, I buy it. I don’t read reviews. I don’t wait for the paperback. I immediately buy it and read it. It doesn’t matter if I am currently already reading something else. I put that book down and read the new Ben Bova book.
His novels are that good.
Though the books fall very much into the realm of since fiction, the various technologies presented in the books are based more on science then fiction. You wont find anyone beaming down to a planet or spaceships that are capable of faster then light (FTL) travel.
Check it out.
Fox Soccer Channel & Setanta Sports announce the 2008-09 English Premiere League schedule
I wish Antietam Cable offered the Setanta Sports channel. I think it’s only available to people that have Direct TV. Read the full article »
Do not piss off Danica Patrick
Evidently there are two things that really piss off IndyCar Series driver Danica Patrick – People that host their website someplace other then GoDaddy and people that drive slow in front of her during a practice session. I have no idea where fellow IndyCar Series driver Milka Duno has her blog hosted with, but evidently she drives slow. At least she does when she’s driving in front of Danica Patrick. Oh no! Danica Patrick then got into it with Milka Duno and there was even a towel involved.
The way Danica is going out of her way to confront other drivers that have down her wrong, she is starting to look like Jimmy Spencer.
Yet even more proof that golf is stupid
Michelle Wie was disqualified from this weekend’s LPGA State Farm Classic. The reason? She failed to sign her scorecard before leaving the magical scoring tent. Evidently golfers are required to sign their score card before leaving the official scoring tent. Sue Witters, the LPGA’s director of tournament competitions, disqualified her for this grave infraction. From the AP (via the Washington Post):
Wie told reporters that after she finished her round Friday, she left the tent just above the ninth green where players sign their scorecards. She was chased down by volunteers working in the tent, who pointed out she hadn’t signed.
Wie returned to the tent and signed the card, and “I thought it would be OK,” she said.
But Wie, according to Witters, had already walked outside the roped-off area around the tent. At that point, the mistake was final, Witters said.
Witters said she and other tour officials didn’t learn about the mistake from volunteers until well after Wie teed off Saturday morning, so they let her finish the round.
That’s mighty classy of them to not disqualify her until she had completed her round the next day.
There is a reason some people think golf is stupid. Crap like this only solidifies that opinion.
Rapper DMX is back in jail
This has got to be one of the funniest mugshots I’ve seen in a good while. Rapper DMX — real name Earl Simmons — was arrested in a Phoenix area shopping mall on felony charges of taking the identity of another. Last April he gave a false name and Social Security number to a hospital to get out of paying $7,500 for medical expenses.
The fake name he used? Troy Jones.
This isn’t his first brush with the law, and unless he drops dead tomorrow, it surely wont be his last. If he’s got enough money to buy cocaine and fighting dogs, you would think he had enough money for health insurance.
I guess not.
If this photo does not make you gag, nothing will
Here we see Rush Limbaugh gorging on the face of his girlfriend, Kathryn Rogers. The way he is sucking on that cheek, it’s as though someone told him that she has ground up Oxycontin on her face.
Is it just me, or does it look like Miss Rogers has a rather large Adam’s apple for a woman?
Coil candle
Take my word for it. When the zombie apocalypse comes, you are going to wish you had 80 hours of beeswax candle on hand. This is a Coil Candle and it’s sold by Gaiam. I’m not sure how it works exactly, but I think the burner contraption lowers onto the coil as it burns. It’s on sale for a mere $29.99. They also sell beeswax refill coils for only $14.99.
You can expect those prices to drastically increase when the dead walk the earth looking for delicious brains to eat.
Star Wars Celebration V to be held in Baltimore?
I read over on Randomonium, an excellent blog maintained by fellow Marylander, that Baltimore is in consideration for Celebration V, a four-day Star Wars convention. The con would take place in the early spring 2009 or 2010.
I think this would make an awful lot of sense. Baltimore’s Inner Harbor area is a great place to hold a major convention. The Baltimore Convention Center is ideally located in relation to other tourist attractions along with a good many restaurants only a few minutes away.
The only caveat would be to make sure to schedule the event when the Orioles are not in town. Oriole Park at Camden Yards is directly across the street from the Baltimore Convention Center. When the Yankees or Red Sox are in town, hotel rooms in and around Baltimore become rather hard to get. I’m assuming that the powers that be over at Lucasfilm Ltd. would be smart enough to take this into consideration, but the folks that run the Baltimore Comic-Con never seem to. This year the comic book convention is being held the same weekend the Orioles play their final two games of the season. At least the Ravens are playing on the road that weekend.
Admin Management Xtended Plugin
My blog’s categories are completely fracked up. Far too long now I’ve simply categorized most posts as the all encompassing “General” category when assigning a category to the post. I was too lazy to think of a more suitable category to assign the post to. For some time now I’ve wanted to go back to older blog posts and at least try to assign an actual applicable category to each posts. That meant I would have to reopen each and every blog post in the editor and make the correction. Did I mention that was lazy?
I looked for a plugin that would enable me to edit individual posts without opening the post in the editor. I found exactly what I was looking for with a plugin called Admin Management Xtended.
What this plugin does is add icons to the Manage Posts/Pages screen that enable you to change things on individual posts or pages without actually opening the page or post in the Edit screen.
The ‘Watchmen’ trailer
The official trailer for the Watchmen movie is up over at Apple’s official movie trailer site. It looks like this movie is going to be as great as I have been hoping it would be. Seriously, I think Alan Moore will even have a hard time watching this and feeling pesimistic about it’s potental.
The cast of 300 advises Obama on foreign policy
I heard this morning on MSNBC that the cast of 300 is advising Barack Obama on foreign policy. I think this is very good news for the presumptive Democratic nominee for president. They certainly know a thing or two about fighting Persians. That could come in handy when it comes to dealing with Iran.
Why did the Packers put a photo of some other team’s quarterback on their ticket?
How funny would it be if the rumors were true and Brett Favre was the starting quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings the night they retire his number?
Comedy gold!
The Washington Nationals TV ratings are like steroids
What do the TV ratings for the Washington Nationals have in common with steroids? Both are being investigated by Major League Baseball.
Speaking to members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, Commissioner Bud Selig said that MLB will be checking into the accuracy of published Nielsen ratings. The SportsBusiness Journal reported last week that the Nationals were pulling in an average of only 9,000 households in the Washington area.
That’s pretty bad.
It’s not as bad as the TV ratings the team was pulling when it was still in Montreal. They weren’t even televised the last few years was the Expos.
Booze party!
The local newspaper, The Herald-Mail runs a daily feature called Mail Call. It’s where they publish comments left on an answering machine, supposedly by people in and around the Hagerstown area.
I’ve had the theory for some time now that most of the calls are fake. I think they are made up by someone over at the Herald-Mail. Listening to a bunch of voice mails and transcribing them word for word sounds like a lot of work.
That’s something not often associated with the Herald-Mail.
This one cracked me up:
I’m a resident in the North End of Hagerstown, and I’d like to make a comment on this article in the paper this morning about shutting down the street to have a booze party. We can’t even have a nice Christmas tree in the square anymore because they said it interfered with the flow of traffic, but yet they want to have a booze party. I think it’s ridiculous. They call it an art district down there. How does that coincide with a booze party? Someone please tell me.
I’m going to out on a limb and take a guess that this fictitious caller doesn’t like booze parties. What he or she is referring to is the Downtown Live Hagerstown music festival. It’s a one day event where national bands and musical artists come and play on the square in downtown Hagerstown. They shut down Washington and Potomac street to vehicle traffic and make it a pedestrian-only area.
It’s been a huge success the first two years it’s been held. Though they serve beer, I don’t think any of the street vendors serve hard alcohol.
Retired Brett Favre asks for unconditional contractual release from the Packers
It looks as though the all-time leader in interceptions thrown has second thoughts about being retired. Perhaps he found out that nowhere else other then in the training rooms of the NFL do they hand out Vicodin pills like Pez candy. The four letter network is reporting that Favre sent a letter via overnight mail to the Green Bay Packers asking for his unconditional contractual release.
The hilarity that will ensue as a result of this is mind boggling. If Favre were to sign with the Minnesota Vikings or the Chicago Bears, fat guys all across Wisconsin that wear a big chunk of foam rubber cheese on their head and name their first born son “Lombardi” will likely have strokes.
Down with the sickness
I woke up yesterday morning not feeling well. I couldn’t stop shivering. No matter how many layers of clothing I put on, I couldn’t stop feeling that I was freezing to death. I took my temperature and I had a slight fever of 100.3 degrees. Sheri talked me into going to the Washington County Hospital Emergency Room and I’m glad she did.
It turns out I have pneumonia.
I’ve never had pneumonia before. What I find strange about it is that I don’t have any pain in my chest. I don’t have a cough. I seemingly have no respiratory problems whatsoever. The chest x-ray told a different story.
The folks over at the Washington County Hospital could not have been any better. I was extremely impressed with the level of care I received from everyone there.
They gave me an I.V. of something when I first got there to put fluids into me. When they diagnosed me as having pneumonia, they gave me a dose of Avelox by I.V. I have to continue taking the Avelox by pill for the next 10 days.
The doctor seemed to think that I got this way from going back on Raptiva for my psoriasis. It’s a highly effective drug for treating psoriasis on your hands or feet, but like most psoriasis medications, it lowers your immune system. I’m supposed to take another injection of Raptiva tonight, but the doctor in the ER told me to skip this week’s dose.
Who knew astrophysics could be so racist?
From the Dallas City Hall Blog on the Dallas Morning News website:
County commissioners were discussing problems with the central collections office that is used to process traffic ticket payments and handle other paperwork normally done by the JP Courts.
Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield, who is white, said it seemed that central collections “has become a black hole” because paperwork reportedly has become lost in the office.
Commissioner John Wiley Price, who is black, interrupted him with a loud “Excuse me!” He then corrected his colleague, saying the office has become a “white hole.”
That prompted Judge Thomas Jones, who is black, to demand an apology from Mayfield for his racially insensitive analogy.
Mayfield shot back that it was a figure of speech and a science term. A black hole, according to Webster’s, is perhaps “the invisible remains of a collapsed star, with an intense gravitational field from which neither light nor matter can escape.”
Other county officials quickly interceded to break it up and get the meeting back on track. TV news cameras were rolling, after all.
I’d love to see the video of this. What I find to be hysterically funny about this is that even though commissioner Mayfield wasn’t being the least bit racially degrading when he used the term black hole, commissioner Price (seen here letting his hair down) was being racially insulting when he responded to the imaginary slur with the term “white hole”.
At least he was trying to be which makes it extremely funny.
If I wasn’t such a cheapskate, I would send commissioner John Wiley Price and Judge Thomas Jones copies of Stephen Hawking’s landmark book, A Brief History in Time. I was looking around Borders yesterday and happened to find an updated, re-written version of the book entitled A Briefer History of Time. I was published in 2005 by Hawking and American physicist Leonard Mlodinow.
U.S. Army colonel sanctioned the mass executions of South Korean political prisoners
This makes me wonder what other vile crap is hiding in so-called classified documents.
From Newsweek:
The American colonel, troubled by what he was hearing, tried to stall at first. But the declassified record shows he finally told his South Korean counterpart it “would be permitted” to machine-gun 3,500 political prisoners, to keep them from joining approaching enemy forces.
In the early days of the Korean War, other American officers observed, photographed and confidentially reported on such wholesale executions by their South Korean ally, a secretive slaughter believed to have killed 100,000 or more leftists and supposed sympathizers, usually without charge or trial, in a few weeks in mid-1950.
And to think that I always believed the machine gunning of political prisoners was something only the godless communists did. It’s things like this that make me sometimes forget that we are supposed to be the good guys.
I learned from the same Newsweek article that the news of these exicutions first surfaced on May 19 in an AP article. An article I don’t remember reading or hearing about.
NBC hires Dan Patrick
Looks like Dan Patrick has got himself a new job. From the New York Times:
Dan Patrick, who left ESPN last year to create his own syndicated radio program and write a column for Sports Illustrated, will join NBC Sports where he will be reunited with Keith Olbermann to call the NFL highlights on “Football Night in America.” NBC is scheduled to make the announcement at 2 p.m. Eastern.
NBC is looking to recreate the chemistry and quirky humor that Patrick and Olbermann demonstrated when they were co-anchors on ESPN’s “SportsCenter,” which they dubbed “The Big Show.” Olbermann joined “Football Night” last year, but is best known now as the host of MSNBC’s nightly “Countdown” program.
Recreate the chemistry? I’d argue that any chemistry the two co-hosts had was before people realized Olbermann could be such a narcissistic, misogynistic douche bag. He didn’t have any of his politically polarizing “Special Comments” back when he was on ESPN. I’m not sure adding Patrick to the mix is going to help. Olbermann is clearly not the same person he was in during this stint at ESPN.
Not that I really understand the attraction of NFL football on Sunday night. I don’t get to watch NFL football on Sunday night. I live on the east coast and I work for a living. I can’t stay up till midnight on a Sunday night to watch football.
Do the Washington Nationals tickets come with a time machine?
One of the side-effects of purchasing tickets online to see the Washington Nationals is that they find out what your email address is. They then use it to send you a seemingly never ending flood of special offers. This morning I received an email from them telling me about a special Hispanic Heritage night at the ballpark. The email states that the promotion will take place on July 1. That’s almost a week ago.
How am I supposed to attend a promotion if they don’t tell me about it until almost a week after it happened? I am all for honoring Hispanic heritage, especially if it means I get to eat chile rellenos.
I love chile rellenos.
Stop supporting bad movies
The superhero movie Hancock staring Will Smith, Jason Bateman, and Charlize Theron made over $107 million this holiday weekend. The movie had been panned by critics.
The movie website Rotten Tomatoes have it a 37% on their “tomatometer”. That’s where they take published movie reviews and separate the positive reviews from the negative reviews. Out of the 167 reviews for Hancock, 106 of them were negative.
So why did so many people go see Hancock?
The movie studios wont stop making sucky movies if so many of the viewing public continue to go to the theater to watch them. Going to the theater to see Hancock is rewarding bad behavior. It tells the movie studios that they can make bad movies and people will go and watch. Even if the critics let them know before hand, they will still go and watch.
Knock it off. Do not go watch bad movies.
How about a little New Gods 101?
Science fiction blog io9 has an article explaining the Jack Kirby created characters from DC’s Fourth World line of books. The characters have been popping up in DC books as of late and reportedly they are the core characters in this summer’s big event Final Crisis.
I wouldn’t actually know since I am not reading it.
In fact, I’m not reading any DC Universe comics right now. They are just too hard to understand. It seems the reader is required to have an extensive knowledge of the history of the DC Universe and that’s something I just don’t have. I wouldn’t know a Mother Box from a bread box. When reading Amazons Attack!, I had no idea who the gray haired, heavy set woman revealed on the last page was. In fact, I thought it was Beatrice Arthur. I had to go online and do some reading to find out it was a character from the New Gods line called Granny Goodness.
Granny Who?
I have a strong suspicion that I’m not alone on this. All three of the New Gods books in the 70’s were canceled because of low sales. This means not an awful lot of people were reading them. How then are readers today supposed to know everything there is to know about the characters from New Gods?
I just don’t get it.
Real life Peter Griffin arrested for selling pills
From Albany, New York’s Channel 6 News:
A 38-year-old Queensbury man has been arrested on drug charges after police say he sold pills to an undercover officer.
Brad Ballard faces two counts of felony fourth-degree criminal sale of a controlled substance. The Warren County Sheriff’s Office said Ballard sold hydrocodone pills to an undercover police officer on more than one occasion in the town of Queensbury.
Ballard was arraigned in Queensbury Town Court where bail was set at $25,000 cash.
Even before reading that article, I knew he wasn’t selling diet pills. His name may be Brad Ballard, but as pointed out on FARK, he bares an uncanny resemblance to Peter Griffin on The Family Guy.
Jesse Helms is finally dead
Finally there is justice in the world. Jesse Helms, that racist old coot from North Carolina is finally not breathing the same air as the rest of us.
His hometown newspaper, The News & Observer, published a joke of an obituary that failed to truly capture the level of absolute racism this man practiced. They described him as “cantankerous” and wrote that “Helms could be the picture of the courtly Southern gentleman“. As if there is anything cantankerous or gentlemanly about hating folks because of the color of their skin.
Not that they failed to mention the Helms’ racism. They wrote:
Although Helms denied he was a racist, his work in the Senate often seemed at odds with the interests of blacks.
Well now, isn’t that putting it rather nicely. Helms was one of two senators for the state of North Carolina, Helms represented many black people. So when his work in the Senate was “at odds with the interests of blacks”, it was at odds with a good many of his own electorate. The very people he should have been representing.
That’s not democracy.
Man tatooed to look like a zombie
To celebrate the release of The Walking Dead #50, a man had his entire body inked to look like he is a zombie. OK, it has nothing to to with The Walking Dead, but would it be any less retarded if it did? I don’t think so.
Follow the link and see a lot more photos. Sadly, missing from the images is a photo of his parents with the look of pride on their faces. I’d like to see that.
Zombie Boy (Bizarre)
Good for him, the spoiled little prick
From the AP (via Yahoo!)
A college student claimed it was all a joke when he put his vote in this fall’s presidential election up for sale on the Web auction site eBay. But prosecutors didn’t see the humor.
University of Minnesota student Max P. Sanders, 19, was charged with a felony Thursday in Hennepin County District Court after allegedly asking for a minimum of $10 in exchange for voting for the bidder’s preferred candidate.
“Good luck!” Sanders wrote under the eBay handle zepdrummer612. “You’re (sic) country depends on You!”
Sanders was charged with one count of bribery, treating and soliciting under an 1893 state law that makes it a crime to offer to buy or sell a vote.
I’m with the prosecutors on this one. I don’t see the humor either.
It never occurred to Max Sanders that buying and selling votes was maybe prohibited by law? I have about as much patience for this type of tomfoolery as I do with the people that get a credit card for their springer spaniel. The difference being that nobody died for the right to apply for a credit card. People actually suffered and died so that rest of us can have the right to vote.
One doesn’t have to go far in the annals of history to find examples of what I am talking about. Harold Ickes, former deputy White House Chief of Staff for Bill Clinton and campaign strategist for Hillary Clinton, only has one kidney. While working as a volunteer in Louisiana during the civil rights movement, he received such a severe beating from a gang of rednecks that he lost a kidney.
He lost a major organ so people could vote.
It’s bad enough that we rarely — if ever — have anyone on the ballot really worth voting for. People like Max Sanders should treat it with just a skosh bit more respect. They shouldn’t be listing it on eBay like its a potato that kind of looks like Jesus.
Happy birthday America
Today is Independence Day. The day in history the original 13 colonies declared their independence from mean ole England and became a real life country. Let freedom ring.
I must say, out of all of the countries that broke away from England, the United States has done awfully well for itself. Have you seen Rhodesia Zimbabwe lately? Ouch.
Sheri and I will be celebrating the holiday by not working. We were going to go to a community yard sale that takes place here in Hagerstown every Fourth of July, the Mile Long Yard Sale, but it looks like it’s going to rain.
MSNBC being the fine news organization that it is is showing back-to-back episodes of Dateline: To Catch a Predator. It’s where they trick some dumb pervert online into thinking he is chatting with a child about sex and they get him to come to what he thinks is the child’s house. In reality, it’s a home rigged with cameras, cops, and NBC’s smarmy Chris Hanson. What else would you expect them to do today, cover the news? I watched a segment earlier and I could swear I saw the predator at a Wizard World Philly. I would switch over to Fox News, but they would try to turn me into a Republican, and I don’t want that to happen.
Dario Franchitti wont be turning left anymore
Former IRL IndyCar Series champion Dario Franchitti (also known as Mr. Ashley Judd) has lost his job as a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series driver. Team owner Chip Ganassi decided to scale back the three-car team to a two-car team leaving Franchitti the odd man out.
Franchitti’s #40 team had had an awful start to the season. His best finish came with 22nd place at Martinsville. He also had a dificult time finding permanent major sponsorship. The team had to resort to using single-race sponsorship with different companies.
Evidently a 35-year old Scotsman doesn’t appeal to key NASCAR demographics. Maybe he would have had more NASCAR appeal if he had started dressing like General Robert E. Lee or maybe learned to play the banjo.
A NASCAR driver can never go wrong learning to play the banjo.
Why don’t people care about swimming?
With the Olympics drawing near, MSNBC and NBC News have been dedicating a lot of coverage to the athletes that will be representing the United States in Beijing this summer. If I didn’t know any better, I would think they were allowing the fact that the “games” are being televised on NBC to motivate them into treating the Olympics as news.
I was watching MSNBC this morning and they were talking about the U.S. Olympic swimming trials currently taking place in Nebraska. The story was about the swimsuits the Olympians will be wearing and how they make the swimmers extremely fast. This was news to me since I was under the impression that Olympic swimming is done in the nude.
Evidently it’s not.
The “news” story got me thinking about competitive swimming and how the general public really doesn’t care too much about it. Sure, it gets some attention every four years at the Olympics, but not much attention is paid to swimming the rest of the time.
Why is that?
We live on a planet where 86% of it’s surface is covered with water. We live on a water planet. You would assume that people living on a world covered with so much water would live and breath swimming. You would think there would be professional swimming leagues enjoyed and followed by millions. Swimmers such as Katie Hoff and Michael Phelps would be household names.
Most people know how to swim. Most people have spent at least some time in the water. We should be able to identify with what these Olympic swimmers are doing and value the exceptional ability they have in the water. The way they are able to rocket themselves through the water is simply awe-inspiring.
We should care about swimming or we should move to Mars.
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