Apr 14 2008
And another thing!
Look, people, if you’re on the road and you decide to do something really rude, like cut someone off or shove in front of someone, the worst, the absolute worst, thing you can then do is get an attack of the guilts and decide to be randomly polite.
Why? Because it screws everyone else up, that’s why.
Apr 13 2008
Sorry about the hiatus, all. I have a few other projects in beta, though none is the labor of love that is mindscalpel.com.
In addition to the coding, I have been focused on traffic. Not the tasty revenue-generating high-volume internet traffic kind of traffic, but rather the paint-drying, teeth-gnashing automobile traffic kind of traffic. And I realized that since an increasing number of us are spending an increasing amount of time sitting in our 0-to-60-in-4.0-seconds sports cars (which, ironically, we never really get to test, since we’re always — that’s right — SITTING IN TRAFFIC), we all need to realize that pretty much every single one of us chooses at least two other people to hate — hate with the hot, hot hate of a thousand burning suns — for the duration of our daily commutes.
Apr 01 2008
Well, thank heavens for the crack training we’ve given to some Transportation Security Agency employees. As reported by local6.com, the agents were able to infer that someone might be a threat at the Orlando airport, working only from incredibly subtle cues that passengers characterized as the guy “acting crazy.”
Mar 28 2008
Michelle Malkin relays a Portfolio story on how Warner Music is spearheading a lobbying push for Congress to require a “music tax” be bundled into your monthly internet service provider fee — supposedly for unlimited access to “a database of all known music.”
Apart from the fact that the phrase “new tax” gets most people in a gun-polishin’, survivalist-cabin-buyin’, Libertarian-votin’ mood, the music industry has apparently completely missed the fact that there’s at least one enormous industry firmly in front of it in line: Pornographers!
You heard that right. Do you really think the first thing the geeks who originally developed the Internet thought, when they were done soldering the last wire in place, was “hey, now I can share music with someone”?
Mar 25 2008
Okay, I admit it. I am torqued. Torqued!
Do you have any idea how much it’s cost me to develop (and, via espionage, steal) my own nuclear weaponry? More than a few peanut butter sandwiches, let me tell you.
And now I see this story, about how we accidentally sent some nuclear warhead fuses to Taiwan. Accidentally! They didn’t even order them! They had asked us for helicopter batteries!
How the hell does this happen? This is worse inventory control than Wal-Mart uses for razor blades, let alone nuclear weaponry, and far worse shipping control than FedEx uses for Christmas gifts. Is there some vast government warehouse somewhere, jam-packed with both junk and classified weapons technology cluttering the shelves, with some knuckleheaded clerk cruising around on a Segway scooter randomly filling boxes? “Dope-di-dope; well, gee, batteries…batteries…can’t find those…oh heck, let’s toss in some of these doohickeys…they look all electrical-like….” And off the Minuteman missile fuses go to Taiwan.
Mar 21 2008
Okay, this has been bugging me for aeons, and if someone has the time and patience to search for more archived videos of old Gillette shaving advertisements, I’m sure you’ll be able to retire rich off the money you’ll raise from this sure-fire class action lawsuit. For now, I’m avoiding the whole thing, because to research this post I had to search for terms like “shaving” and “video,” and if you’ve ever done something like that you know you’ll get results that would make you want to stick pins into your brain in the hope of destroying the synapses holding those visual memories.
Mar 20 2008
Years ago, I received some deep wisdom from an extraordinary, modern-day Vietnamese philosopher. Oddly enough, this philosopher appeared on late-night television, surrounded by bikini-clad women, and was aggressively hawking his real estate seminars.
Nevertheless, I learned several important lessons from him, the most prominent among them (for me, at least) being the following (reproduced from memory):
“So I come to the United States, I tell people I want to be rich. They look at me and say ‘You crazy! You poor guy, you poor immigrant, you barely speak English, lots of other people smarter than you, they not rich, how you think you going to get rich? You crazy!’”
“You know what I say to these people? I say ‘You are a loser! Get out of my way! I make it somehow!‘”
Mar 18 2008
A quick observation and inference:
The Supreme Court is hearing arguments today on the meaning of the Second Amendment (it’s examining whether Washington D.C.’s gun ban is unconstitutional, and in deciding that issue will likely discuss whether the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms). It also recently agreed to hear a case on the FCC’s power to prohibit foul language on the airwaves.
Here’s my prediction:
The Supremes will decide that we don’t have an unfettered right to defend ourselves with firearms.
But we’ll be able to swear about that as much as we want.
Mar 16 2008
One thing that I focus on in this blog is the creation of original content. In other words, blogs primarily full of links to other work don’t interest me as much as blogs where more effort goes into them.
Nevertheless, given the emergence of a mini-theme on Mind Scalpel these last few days of the weaponization of everyday things, I could not resist highlighting this story in the <shudder> Boston Globe:
Owner fights off meat thief with frozen ham
March 15, 2008
GLOUCESTER, Mass.—A prosciutto-wielding meat thief in Gloucester met his match when a restaurant owner fought off the assault by slamming the thief’s face with a ham.
Joe Scola of Scola’s Place heard a noise in his restaurant Wednesday, then saw a man fleeing with his arms full of meat from Scola’s freezer.
Scola caught up, and started taking the meat back.
That’s when the man raised a five pound log of frozen prosciutto over his head, presumably to whack Scola.
Luckily, Scola had his own frozen pig product on hand.
He tells the Gloucester Daily Times that he slammed the ham in the man’s face, leaving a gash. The thief was so stunned, he dropped the meat and ran.
Police searched the area, but couldn’t find the suspect.
Possibilities abound, here: “Look out! He’s packing meat!” “We must address the problem of assault prosciutto…”.
Mar 14 2008
Look, we’ve got to face facts here: Most states’ names are either incredibly dorky, completely illogical or downright offensive.
Seriously, I mean, “Rhode Island”? Not an island.
“West Virginia”? No “East Virginia”.
Washington D.C.? There’s a huge freakin’ state all the way on the other side of the continent that everybody confuses with our national capitol.
Okay, technically, D.C.’s not a state, either, but you get my point.
So Something Must Be Done. We’ve got to change those names!
You might think, first of all, that this is just too large a task even to contemplate. I disagree. Prince was able to do it (heck, he went all the way to an unpronounceable symbol just to mess over his record company — you go, [Unpronounceable Symbol]!), and I’ll wager that more people have heard of him than, say, “North Dakota.”