from the spam
Dating between human beings can now be achieved so many different ways than before.
headline of the day
Fat-fingered sumo wrestlers given iPads
I have a nightmare
from the comments
Last week I bought a pound of French Roast at a Starbucks inside a grocery store and the very young lady who did the grinding apparently didn’t know what the instruction “for a paper cone filter, please” meant. She dumped it in and the machine ran, with her looking at it, for about ten minutes. Finally she closed the bag and gave it to me. When I opened it at home is was ground so fine as to be shaped into clods and and other shapes. I’m using it but it sort of tastes like a speed freak’s idea of a slow elevator ride.
from the comments
Have you seen the tv ads where the guy gives one little kid a real pony (trots it out in the room there) and the other little kid gets a little piece of shit toy pony (and variations of that situation)? If I could drive a truck through the wall at that studio and smash that asshole I would do it.
The Last Words of Dutch Schultz
Google’s transcription of a phone call from Robert Ledgerwood’s mother reminded me of the last words of Dutch Schultz, as transcribed by a stenographer at the dying gangster’s bedside in Newark City Hospital.
OK, OK, I am all through. Can’t do another thing. Look out, mama, look out for her. You can’t beat him. Police, mama, Helen, mother, please take me out. I will settle the indictment. Come on, open the soap duckets. The chimney sweeps. Talk to the sword. Shut up, you got a big mouth! Please help me up, Henry. Max, come over here. French-Canadian bean soup. I want to pay. Let them leave me alone.
two wrongs
via Backcountry
Precious Cargo
A Thai woman was arrested in a Bangkok airport when it was discovered that she had packed a sedated two-month old tiger cub into a suitcase full of stuffed tiger toys:
X rays indicated that along with stuffed animals, the bag contained bones. [...] The bag, which had been checked by a 31-year old Thai woman, had been en route to Iran.
The cargo was confiscated and the cub is now under the protection of Thailand’s Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation, according to TRAFFIC International, a British-based conservation group committed to shutting down international trade in threatened and endangered species. DNA testing of the animal is currently underway to determine its subspecies, which may offer clues to whether it had been poached from the wild or reared in captivity.
Topo Gigio sighting in Sicily
Unfortunately my goat wasn’t as fast as his so I couldn’t get his head for you on a stick. Don’t let the disguise fool you, his ears are tucked.
Matthew Taylor’s 21st century enlightenment
Recalling my distaste with The Empathic Civilization, Taylor’s observations feel more palatable, even if the latent utopianism in humanism gives me the willies.
I endorse this message
It’s going to kill off anything I’ve got in my system that shouldn’t be there I guess
Famous?
Here is my quote, featured on the Middle Men website. I heard it was in a TV spot but I can’t find it anywhere online.
I’m still not sure what Vremarkable is, but I hope Mr. Ribisi takes it as a compliment.
“That rug really tied the room together, did it not?”
Last night in Queens Omar Rivera walked into the al-Imam Mosque on 24 Steinway Street with a bottle of beer and penis in hand and proceeded to urinate on the congregation’s prayer rugs while uttering various anti-Muslim slurs curses.
The “clearly very intoxicated” Rivera was taken into custody by the NYPD.
Late Update: The New York Post originally reported Rivera using ‘anti-Muslim slurs’. But they’ve now revised their story. The NYPD would not confirm to TPM whether Rivera’s curses were tied to Islam. And subsequent reporting by the Washington Post suggests Rivera was so drunk he probably didn’t know he was in a Mosque.
Next to toilets and the great outdoors, I feel like rugs would be the next most-natural place to urinate.
Well, didja?
I sent/got exactly 2,639 text messages last month.
What’s your number?
the glidecycle
via espertron over at talking treads
would you please drink more water
Since marriage and relationships have been themes from lately…
Danny & Annie, via Vulture and Storycorps and a bunch of others.
Maxence Cyrin – Where Is My Mind
via It’s Nice That
this is the right perspective
R.R. Reno, Professor of Theology at Creighton University, has close to the right perspective on the “Ground Zero mosque:”
The symbolism reflects the reality of New York, and of America. We’re a largely if often confusedly and half-heartedly Christian nation that builds temples to Mammon, and then liberally scatters memorial and monuments to satisfy our secular piety. America is a mixed-up national project, unlikely to satisfy the exacting ideals of a theologian, political philosopher, or cultural theorist, and yet preternaturally successful, perhaps because it is a nation and society largely in accord with basic human sensibilities that resist reduction to neat theories and pat principles.
Aristotle ranked magnanimity among the virtues that characterize a man who is at once powerful and noble. This virtue involves treating those who are weaker with a certain indulgence. When a servant breaks a vase, a magnanimous soul waves it off. If an underling owes a debt, it is forgiven as a gesture of indifference. “Don’t worry about it,” says the magnanimous person.
Although we often see its fierce side in the news, by and large Islam is weak. It’s not vying for political control or cultural dominance in America, where it’s largely irrelevant. Radical Islam is of course a global threat, but mostly as a power of disintegration rather than a force to be reckoned with. The country currently facing an existential threat from Islam is Pakistan, not America.
We should be magnanimous. Abdul Rauf’s Islamic Center on Park Place may be a good idea or a bad idea. I’m not sure myself. But this seems obvious: in comparison to the very big fact of America, it’s a small idea, and not worth worrying about.
The language of “weak”, as I read it here, has to do with cultural pervasiveness, i.e., Islam is a minority perspective in the US. I wouldn’t have used the Aristotle quote with the servant example for obvious reasons, but servanthood is not salient to his point, I think. Regardless, the comments on the article are mostly depressing.
There’s only one way.
I just found this in my Google Voice inbox. It’s a call from my mother, which she didn’t seem to be aware she was making, while she was in Canada on vacation. I don’t know who the man is, but he sounds awesome.
I started to transcribe the actual conversation, but it’s a bit fuzzy in places, so I’ll just give you what Google translated.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Hello 8 okay, so your brother. Ohh, Bob. Yeah, I think you know I will. That horse pistol Henry, alright, thanks a lot of Karen glad you’re lucky with prices rich people because it before. Do. We’ll take a look at it and. After 2 hop all the traffic. It’s probably best way dot com well. Because, you see, or 6 o’clock in the morning so if you would have to do, all the traffic going this way to Royal, and I have to do people to call me back. This way because of all about working. Hello cursor this birthdays bridge. There’s only one way. This is being repaired. Which is the hospital What You Need usual. Little all the pieces A little while. All that so I will not pay freight. But we’re putting a couple of Yeah, so I was. Hello, my name. S. 4. Bud are you i’m from here okay this is not yet problem okay. This place is called the way so close to Ontario. Yeah. So those. There is some of that was. Perhaps I don’t know, just took off. Hi evening. Now, I never, never. Kevin Hi. Here, sorry it’s Pontiac coming back I can hear me. We may here. But now that you got that time. We have an okay wondering if there So if it’s Bruce. I have a chance to see if you’re gonna carry Parkview yes.
out of the mouths of depressed 4-year-olds
Mickey lies. Dreams don’t come true.
Fire Tornado
I had no idea these existed. (thanks, Robert)
the fried food finalists for this year’s Texas State Fair
Deep Fried S’mores Pop-Tart
Deep Fried Frozen Margarita
Fernie’s Fried Club Salad
Fried Beer
Fried Chocolate
Fried Lemonade
Texas Fried Caviar
Texas Fried Frito Pie
“When you bite into it the beer really does pour out,” said Gooding, in describing the beer-filled pretzel pocket.
Descriptions of each delectable at the link.
from the comments
Beautiful photo Cindy. In some ways it provokes thoughts of Grace and myself — why we decided to get married so young, what will make us different from the overwhelming high percentages of young married couples who will be divorced within 5 years, etc. If you asked me, I’m not sure I would have a completely coherent answer. I generally scoff at anyone thinking about getting married before they’re 26, yet I was married a couple weeks before my 23rd birthday. Perhaps it’s more a matter of maturity than a magic number — I certainly had experienced more life at 22 than most people do at 30, and I was and remain absolutely enamored with my wife.
It makes me wonder, though, why folks get married so young. Maybe it’s a cultural thing, and I’m sure it is in some cases — I can name a dozen couples off the top of my head who got married too early because of cultural expectations. But maybe it’s also because we long for dependability and consistency in such a seemingly shaky world. Dating’s fun and sex is great, but there’s nothing quite like having a hand to hold during the worst of experiences.
Anyways kids, do as I say, not as I do.
No description available
If you watch only one naked hay baling video today?
(thanks, Patrick)
