Snickers bar ad featuring Mr T banned as homophobic | Herald Sun

HRC said the company was supporting “the notion that the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community was a group of second-class citizens.”

Well, they’re not any more second-class than old, fat white guys. Buck up, little buckaroos.

A pretty funny Mr T ad:

I even played soccer, a lot, back in the 70s. The most the ref ever said was “Play on” provided there wasn’t bone sticking out of the flesh.

Can I just tell you how much I’ve grown to love what Mr. T has come to represent? He’s pretty much all of the Three Stooges in one guy. Good on T for being T, and thanks to Snickers, a really bad candy bar, for hoisting his Stooge ass on us.

Oil prices drop, easing fears of energy shock - International Herald Tribune

Whatever.

Why are journalists so damned dumb? Shock, I say. Get over it, morons. It was precisely what I said it was back in April. Speculators humping each other’s leg, and C-store owners stuffing it up the hinders of the traveling public. Summer travel season is pretty much over, so down come the pump prices.

Not so incidentally, down comes the demand from the ADHD American voters looking for relief right off our shores. The idiots will never ever stop to think that unleaded is forty or sixty cents higher than it was before all the energy shock bullshit started. And they’ll elect more Democrats who block actually producing the stuff in our backyard so as to make sure that Teddy Kennedy dies in view of a pristine horizon.

Screw ‘em all, says I. We’ll pay, one way or another, but eff it. You can’t stop us. Nobody has yet. Americans do what the Marines say - adapt, improvise, and overcome.

“It is critical our community be an integral and active part of the debate because African-Americans are disproportionately impacted by the effects of climate change economically, socially and through our health and well-being,” House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., said July 29.

A majority of Americans in some part of South Carolina cast a vote to put this fucking moron in office. And then the Democrats gave him some form of honorary title, which he used to crank up a GrievanceCorp.

I can’t even use the old chestnut of Women, Minorities Hardest Hit, since it’s so absurd. This man is one of the people in charge of running the United States of America.

And in other shithead news, an ancient Republican Alaskan Senator (I hear he helped form the state?) has been shown to be a lying fucking weasel, and a botoxed California Democratic congress-lady has stated that her mission here is to save the planet.

Term limits, bitches. It’s the only hope for our dear Republic. I love this country so much, but fuck me running, we elect some idiots. We’ve simply got to get a way, short of armed insurrection, to jettison these power-mad corrupted encephalopaths. Armed insurrection is unbelievably time-consuming.

I got all the books done, so now I’m back playing with that SeeqPod thingy — I guess it kinda crawls the web looking for “media” — so far I’m just checking some of my faves. Here’s another from RWH:

Here’s a whole SCOTS playlist:

SeeqPod - Playable Search

I guess they get around the copyright issue by indexing everybody else’s web page and then just streaming from there. Which is gonna put a hurting on some dude’s bandwidth bill who forgot he loaded up a bunch of tunes back in the day. Interesting concept.

OK, then — hitting the river. Pics TK.

Can some mechanical engineer tell me why this stupid thing is keyed like that?

Because that means I can’t just drill a hole using a regular old hand drill and jig, or even a drill press. I reckon there’s some kind of slick metal-shop dealio that does it, but damn, it kinda hoses the old “let’s fool around in the garage and build something with this” ethos. I guess I could grind it off, huh? Or get the ChiComms to make me one without it.

PS I’m studiously ignoring the enormous pile of invoices and POs on my desk, and QuickBooks lurking down on the menu bar. Man, I hate accounting. “Balance sheet? Whaddat? We got a balance…not much, but it be a balance.” I just want to make stuff and sell it. I can’t wait to hire an office manager. Sigh. OK, then, let’s get to it. I’ll treat myself to a paddle later.

Tarantulas, fire ants lurk in Texas floodwaters

South Texans eager to salvage what they can from waterlogged homes struck by Hurricane Dolly have another problem: The floodwaters they’re slogging through are laced with stinging fire ants, snakes and even deadly tarantulas.

Lurk.

You gotta deal with that shit no matter if there’s a flood or not. What you gotta watch out for with floods is bundles of barbed wire that’s all rolled up and will eat you up like the Blob.

Mr. Medlock:

We were of course subject to every stoplight between here and San Antonio. That alone would stop me from doing it today. I’m pretty sure there weren’t many four-lane highways, if any. There were no McDonalds or any other chain restaurant back then that I remember. And the same was true for motels and hotels. Basically you had no standards that you could trust. Everything was local unless you had been there before. Sometimes that worked out good if you were able to get some good home cooking.

“No standards you could trust.” Are you kidding me? Who expects “standards you could trust”? Hell, I yearn for a world without ‘em. Like I want to wake up and say, “I’m headed to Denny’s for a Grand Slam that’s just like the one I had in Alabama.”

This is where our nation went non-linear. Everybody wants the same crap they get at home. I’m extremely thankful that I got to go to Detroit and get a loose scattered chiliburger, and went to North Carolina and got cole slaw on my BBQ sandwich, and went to California and got fish tacos. and went to Chicago and got the world’s greatest street dogs, and went to Buffalo and got the original hot wings. Standards, my ass. I never wanted to eat tacos and chicken fried steak the rest of my life.

Wait…what am I saying? I kinda do. Except not really very much. Occasionally, OK? A CFS every quarter, some Tex-Mex about once a week. A taco, a couple of cheese enchiladas, and a tamale. That’s living. With paint-peeling green sauce, of course.

YouTube without all the eye-candy:

Via Tom McMahon…the site not the song…the song is all me.

And, I should note, that it’s all based on Flash, which works about as well as my ancient beater Ford. Which is to say, OK, when it gets going, but then it goes haywire, and then, there you go. Well, that embedded baloney is much like that. It doesn’t work for me very well. Still, the kids behind it might make it work.

Anyhoo, here it is, complete with gay Longhorn memorabilia:

I stumbled across this during a boozing session, and it was on the teevee - the Hooter’s Swimsuit Competition:

Who knew? And why wasn’t I informed of this immediately?

Let’s see if this works:

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Kinda dull, but I was working out speeds and zoom settings and the right place to be for good shots. Boring hobbyist stuff. If you just want to see them, you can go directly to them.

…and a random walk thru your music library. I think that Teenage Riot song has been the soundtrack to my life since I first heard it. All I can say is that I’m bone-weary of slow-moving, excuse-laden, lackadaisical bullshit.

Yeah, I’m probably the asshole here. Fine, so be it.

If you’re of that bent, of course:

Pittsburgh cancer center warns of cell phone risks - Yahoo! News

The head of a prominent cancer research institute issued an unprecedented warning to his faculty and staff Wednesday: Limit cell phone use because of the possible risk of cancer.

Whatever. Bacon, grilled beef, Marlboros, jalapenos, cell phones, flouridated water, drunk drivers, loaded guns, lightening, smoked meats, solvents, Hurricane Dolly, Copenhagen, Washington apples, aluminum in your deodorant, lead paint, nuclear energy, nuclear missiles, gasoline, greenhouse gases — just frikkin’ whatever.

I guess I could just stay in bed under the covers, but that’s the day the Gulfstream V, owned by a high-flying entrepreneur coked to the gills on the way to Cabo San Lucas with his juggy 20yo Estonian “personal assistant” intern, develops a leak in the potty bulkhead, and I’ll be killed by a falling iceball of Ketel One, Opus One, and Veuve Cliquot piss. Who wins that one?

Gimme the keys, gimme a beer, and gimme the phone…let’s go get some enchiladas, and then we can go bowling.

…but I made my first ethernet patch cable today. I’ve sold everything from bus & tag to ESCON to HIPPI to token ring to FDDI to Fibre Channel, and every flavor of ethernet ever to exist, but I’d never pieced one together from cable and jacks with crimpers. Feeling a little accomplished right now.

Yes, it’s supremely trivial, but I gots ideas and no one to make the little buggers I need.

Bloomberg.com: Worldwide

GM, Ford `On the Verge of Bankruptcy,’ Altman Says (Update2)

By Greg Miles and Caroline Salas

July 22 (Bloomberg) — General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co., the two biggest U.S. automakers, have about a 46 percent chance of default within five years, according to Edward Altman, a finance professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business.

Maybe this means I can pick up a nice F250 FX4 or a Duramax at a price commensurate with the reality of the market.

Meanwhile, here’s some Talking Heads — via Varifrank:

What I think about when I watch this is what a freaking toad I was back then, because I thought it was the most important cinematic offering of the decade. Today, I shock myself by remembering correctly that Tina Weymouth was the chick bassist. But Frank is right - Barry does look he borrowed his older brother’s suit for the student government election. Worse, he sounds worse than that guy with the broken leg in Election. Everytime I hear that guy on the teevee, I think to myself, “This guy is supposed to be an orator?”

And on the other hand, I still think Thurston Moore is a genius:

I think we need a YouTube without all the horrible art-film videos making fun of dorks like me, since the music just kicks. The guitar break at 2:30-ish still gives me goosebumps. Kim Gordon is the chick bassist here, and she did some awesome vocals, probably the best of SY. Her voice on top of the rest of that, erm, Sonic-ness, was fucking wild back in the 80s. Check it:

That video very accurately predicts and pre-skewers practically everything that’s happened pop-wise since.

OK, then.

DRUDGE REPORT FLASH 2008®

An editorial written by Republican presidential hopeful McCain has been rejected by the NEW YORK TIMES — less than a week after the paper published an essay written by Obama, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

The Decrepit Malodorous Grey Spinster continues to become more so. Wonder how many foolish journalism majors nice folks are getting pink slips this week? Here’s the equation
Number of People Required to Publish a Paper of Record - Number of People Required to Be Barry's House Organ = Pink Slips Handed Out In Some Indeterminate Period

The bad news is they’re closing Starbucks left and right, so those poor bastards might have to learn how to do something productive, as there will be no place for them to sit and look pensive all the live long day. As a businessman, this is where I say, “Prepare to repel boarders! Except for the ones with big jugs and short skirts, natch.”

NB: You can file this under “Everything is Seemingly Spinning Out of Control”, which, I’m ready to punch that shit up a bit, as it’s grown tiresome already.