kkk brought up losing his wedding ring in his blog. I have a similar story, although in my case my wife found out that I had lost it. I'm a little older than kkk, but we're roughly the same generation and most of us take our rings off far more than our fathers did. As far as I know, my dad's ring has NEVER come off, it's fused to his finger. But our generation seems to not really be used to wearing rings full time. Mine comes off all the time. This can lead to trouble. Here's my story.
One day I realized that I didn't really know for sure where my ring was. I looked in all the normal places it could be, I checked every single pair of pants pockets, shirt pockets, every nook and cranny in my car, briefcase, bedside night table, every drawer in the house, desk at work, etc.
Then I remembered one of my favorite lines of all time, written by Arthur Conan Doyle in a Sherlock Holmes novel (I think it was "The Sign of Four").
"Once you have eliminated all possibilities, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
I'm telling you, this worked for me. It was amazing. I thought what remains, I know it isn't in any of the usual places, so what's left? I remembered that I had been vacuuming in the dining room and there were some small boxes in there. I remembered I had changed the vacuum bag and dumped it in the nearest thing handy, which was the boxes. Here's the critical part: I didn't know where to look for a new replacement bag, so I had emptied out the bag and reused it. Emptying the bag involved digging in through the one hole with my hands and taking out the stuff in there. Since my ring doesn't fit snugly on my finger, it can come off somewhat easily. I looked in the remains of all the dust and crap that had come out of the vacuum bag, and there was the ring. Thank you Mr. Doyle.
The Cincinnati Reds have hired Dusty Baker as thier manager. Good God. Well, I guess it's appropriate to hire a racist in this town. After all we had Marge Schott and her Hitler memorabilia for an owner. F*** me it's going to be a helluva 2008 season.
Amazing, kids actually learn better and become smarter by DOING things. It seems this study finds that playing with blocks produces smarter children than playing classical music to them while they are in their crib or even in the womb.
Some dopes actually believe that if they put on Mozart it will somehow stimulate the infant's brainwaves and develop their brain better. Uh, sure. I guess this is similar to the old tall tale that if you play audio of some textbook under your pillow at night you'll "absorb" the knowledge right into your cerebellum. Knock it off people, achieve by doing, don't be like... teachers.
7:45am
The brand new Airbus A380--the largest passenger plane in the world--flew into Greater Cincinnati Airport today as part of a promotional tour. This is a French built plane (Airbus is a French company and a big rival to Boeing). The engines are manufactured by a joint venture between usual rivals General Electric and Pratt and Witney.
The GE engine plant is right here in Cincinnati and on its way to the airport it did a low altitude flyby over the GE plant, which is about 25 miles north of the airport and close to where I work. We could see the thing out the window of our office building. Eh, big deal, it's a frog plane, I'll take a new Boeing 787 Dreamliner anyday. A lot of people around the area phoned police about the low flying plane, thinking it was in trouble or a terrorist attack despite forewarning by Cincinnati authorities.
James Brown had to be embarrassed as a black man when he pimped the 60 minutes segment on Vince Young and had to lead in to a clip featuring a Young quote. Young, eschewing the time-honored double negative preferred by ignorami for centuries, passed go and went straight for the triple negative. In responding to a question regarding being told by critics (and presumably coaches) that he should be less reckless he said "Can't nobody tell me nothing." Now, trying to glean any meaning from the grammar of that sentence would probably produce a confused look similar no doubt to the look on the face of the scholar who was first presented with Egyptian heiroglyphics and asked "what does this mean?" But it certainly has a lot of street cred, I guess.
"Timeout" is the latest fad for "correcting" children (and utterly bullshit) but now we have a situation in football where the adults are getting hip to timeouts--and the refs are enabling them.
On Sunday during the Florida v. Auburn game the Florida coach was allowed to call a timeout during his opponents field goal attempt in such a way so that the kicker was forced to go through with the kick but it wouldn't count. So he had to kick it again. This is effing bs. It would be awesome though, if a coach tried this and the kicker missed the 1st attempt, and because of the timeout, kicked it again and made it. Ouch.
7:50pm More road nonsense
kkk always seems to have an asshole driver story...don't we all.
A couple days ago I was at a light waiting to turn left--waiting for an opening in the stream of cars coming the other way. A truck comes up behind me after I had been there already. Finally there is an opening and apparently I didn't accelerate fast enough because this guy was nearly touching my rear bumper. So I speed up and we come up to the 4 way stop at an intersection. This intersection is weird in that it has 2 lanes. The lane on the right ends not far up ahead. So I know what this guy is going to do--I'm in the left lane, the correct lane to eventually continue. He gets in the right lane and doesn't really stop at the stop sign, he wants to fake a stop and get ahead of me. I, seeing this coming a mile away, give him a taste of his own medicine. I mimic his "rolling stop" and take off just as he is taking off (there was no other cars at the other 3 stop signs) staying ahead of him. Now, there is a car ahead of us, in my lane. This guy decides to gun it and barely gets ahead of the car in front of me. I had to slow down because the car in front was going a normal, slowish speed. But at least he didn't cut me off and if the car wasn't there, he would've had to get back in my lane behind me.
Wow, our Navy is really evil. Check this out.
This building has existed since 1967 and now thanks to Google Earth, some people are outraged. Due to complaints the Navy will spend $600,000 of your dollars to fix something that is completely meaningless and doesn't affect anybody.
The U.S. women's soccer team has been pummeled by Brazil, 4-0 in the World Cup semi-final. For this game, the goalie that had played in all the games of the World Cup was benched in favor of a veteran goalie who had played well against Brazil earlier in the summer. Not since whats-his-name (Red Sox manager) left Pedro in the game one inning too long in 2003 and the Sox blew their 3-0 lead in the playoffs has a player change been this controversial. Well, maybe not, since no one is paying the least bit attention to this.
HBO is making a movie about the 2000 presidential election in Florida. So what's the over/under on how many days this will be premiered before the presidential election between Hillary and Guliani/Romney/Thompson?
Savage is trying to set differentiate himself from other Conservative radio hosts by taking the side of the U of Florida student who was tazed by the campus police at a John Kerry speech. He wants to be the "renegade independent Conservative" don't you know. In explaining his position he told a few untruths. Maybe he thought what he was saying was true, but I doubt it. That would make him a liar. Oh well, if the shoe fits. Here's what he said.
1. The kid was hand-cuffed when he was tased.
Wrong. They could not handcuff him due to his squirming and resisting.
2. The female officer tased him without warning.
Wrong. They warned him, telling him to stop resisting.
3. "They" cut off the mike during his allotted time because tase-boy was asking Kerry unsettling questions about Skull and Bones.
Wrong. The Q&A had been declared over and tase-boy interrupted and strated giving a speech and not obeying the rules of the Q&A. He would not stop yelling.
By the way, tase-boy's yelling "help! help me! they're arresting me!" during the event is eerily, hilariously, similar to a scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. When King Arthur is riding along among a bunch of serfs and he drags Michael Palin off, who is protesting the fact that Arthur has declared himself King of the Britains because some "aquatic tart" handed him a sword. Palin yells out "Help! Help! I'm being oppressed! See the repression!"
So I'm reading the next to last book in the Harry Potter series. Why I'm not sure, maybe it's just the massive pull of something that is a cultural phenomenon. I want to read the final book and I might as well read the book that leads up to it. It hasn't gotten up to a good start. I'm already annoyed with it. There's a line in the opening chapter about the Prime Minister of England meeting with the U.S. president. The president is referred to as a "wretched person". Great, and I have some 700 pages to go.
At my workplace, I have the misfortune to have my desk (cubicle) near the break room. I get to hear the noises and conversations of everyone making lunch, whatever. Today I heard some lunkhead saying to someone "Don't drink from the tap! You should drink from the water fountain, the water in the fountain is treated!". Man, how did we get to the point in the US where people believe tap water is dangerous and/or unhealthy? Tap water is safe to drink and will not harm you. It is treated. Remember when the saying was "don't drink the water in Mexico"? They were talking about the tap water and it was because it wasn't treated, unlike the nice, safe water we have here in the USA. Nobody ever said "don't drink the water in Mexico...oh yeah and also don't drink it in the US either". Well, until now at least. For some reason, it has become the norm that you shouldn't drink form the tap, even though nothing has changed to make it less safe to drink.
In some instances, water from a water fountain will taste better, but it is no more safe. Taste is the reason you should drink from a water fountain or bottled water, not to avoid sickness. The bottled water you buy is from the tap, unless it says specifically that it is from a spring, such as Evian or Poland Springs. The bottling companies take the water from the tap and then do further treatments on it, mainly to improve taste and sometimes to introduce minerals and/or vitamins to the water.
Me and the Mrs went shopping for a cabinet thing for the basement, since we're moving the computer down there. We went to the frontgate outlet. Frontgate sells yuppie, expensive stuff for your home and patio. Right up my alley. We found a nice wood cabinet that had a chip in one of the corners and it had scratches from being a floor model and all, but it looked ok, especially for something that is going in the basement. This thing retailed for about $500-$600. We got it for $65.
I was watching G4 channel's coverage of the 2007 Comic-Con and they showed a
special announcement by the principal cast and director of the new Indiana Jones
movie. This was broadcast to the Comic-Con audience and featured Spielberg, Ford
and others. I liked it when Spielberg was muted when he said the title of the
new film (I'm sure a lip reader catched it and it will soon be spoiled all over
the internet).
But then Spielberg did something that could only appeal to the hardcore Raiders
fans: he brought out a chair with the name "Marion Ravenwood", followed shortly
thereafter by Karen Allen. Pretty cool if you ask me. Marion was one of my all
time favorite female characters of any movie. The fans always wondered why she
disappeared from the two sequels and now Spielberg has made things right. I just
hope he makes the movie right. There are those who will go nameless who are
opposed to this new sequel (kkktookmybabyaway) and they have a point. Last
Crusade was a fitting ending and Ford is a senior citizen at this point, etc. I
don't know, it's to big of an event for me to ignore it. I'll be seeing it in
the theatres for sure.
I tried the new Miller beer product called "Chill". You've probably seen the
commericals. It has lime and salt and is a Mexican recipe going way back. Last
week I was walking through Biggs and there was a lady handing out little plastic
cups of Chill along with chips and salsa. They were 25 cents to try so I gave it
a shot. It was good and the typical beer after-taste is non-existent. Works for
me, way to go Miller. PLus I love those Miller High Life commericals with the
guy removing Miller beer from places that have expensive prices, so Miller good
with me. Besides, Budweiser has George Clooney as a spokesperson, so I'll not be
drinking a Budweiser anytime soon.
The new sitcom based on the Geico Caveman commericals is making news. It seems
the producers/network suits/whomever have seen fit to announce that the show "IS
NOT A RACIAL ALLEGORY". Liberals everywhere must be saddened, I'm sure they were
looking forward to seeing race themes on the show as whites abused the poor
cavemen. Now I'm very skeptical of this show's success because only one of the
three actors from the commercial are going to be in series. Big Mistake.
RFK Jr called Glenn Beck a fascist and corporate toadie during the Live Earth concert. Glenn is outspoken as not
buying into the man-made, iminent disaster global warming hysteria. Glenn had Jr on his CNN show and asked him what
the definition of fascism was. Jr responded "the American Heritage dictionary definition is government controlled by
corporate power".
Now the real American Heritage dictionary definition of fascism:
NOUN: 1. often Fascism a. A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent
socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of
belligerent nationalism and racism. b. A political philosophy or movement based on or advocating such a system of
government. 2. Oppressive, dictatorial control.
I happened to see Mission Impossible 2 the other day. It is both a great movie and a terrible movie. It's terrible
because of its title. The movie has nothing to do with the television series upon which it is based--it is in fact a
disgrace to connect it to that series. It is nothing like the TV series. It's great because it is an entertaining,
flashy film experience. The music is great, John Woo directs with flair and style. Movies are supposed to be
entertaining and as long as you push the words "mission impossible" from your mind, MI2 is fantastic. We need more
movies like this. This movie was supposed to usher in a new era of action film and in a limited way it has, but not
nearly enough in my opinion. Now, I still want diversity in movies, dramas etc. Take Prince of the City for example.
You don't know anything about this movie but it is an adult, interesting movie, well written and well acted. I suggest
giving it a look sometime when you have 2 hours to kill. It's a perfect example of interesting vs. entertaining. It's
not exciting. We need more MI2.
There was a show on in the late 70s/early 80s called "That's Incredible". It featured people from around the world who did strange things, like had 5 inch fingernails or something, or who performed some kind of stunt. It was hosted by John Davidson and some chick with the last name Crosby or something.
Now I was a young teenager taking all this in and I remember a couple of people from the show. One guy from India, the full Hindoo deal, was on and he was referred to as the "Yogi ----", I don't remember the second part. This guy was over 6 feet tall and would contort and twist himself into this little clear plexiglass box that was something like 3 ft by 3 ft. They even put a lid on the box. He wore nothing but those diaper looking things and this guy was a TV cult hero for a brief period.
This other guy was a specialist at jumping over cars as they drove toward him. Hey, don't ask me, this is what passed for talent back in the day. This guy would stand in the road and a car would be driven at a specified speed directly towards him. He would get a running start and leap up, letting the car speed under him and then he would land safely. One time he did hit his foot on the upper part of the windshield, that was the only time I saw him screw up. The car was a Ferrari 308 (the Magnum PI Ferrari). I always wondered what became of these two guys. I can't imagine where your career goes after jumping over cars on TV or squeezing into a little box.
I recently fixed up a old 10-speed bike. I got nice cushy handle bar wraps, a new gel seat cover, new tires, special bike chain lubricant/cleaner, and even got a new chain thing on the back wheel, the one with the french name that controls the "speed" changes (I was expecting that to be expensive, but it was only 13 bucks). Now, I'll ride the thing around my neighborhood, which luckily is a pretty large area of winding streets, but I aint taking it out on the actual roadways. I know how drivers react to bikers and I'm not going anywhere near them. 99% of drivers see a biker on the road and they go into full adversarial mode. They get angry--how dare this guy get in my way! I'll admit to getting impatient and a bit teed off when I have to slow to 10mph, waiting to get around a biker.
Well, lookee at us...Cincinnati has made the bigtime. The Wall Street Journal published an article about a regional backyard game called Cornhole. It's in the same genus as Jarts, badmitton, etc.
WSJ
excerpt:
It is a fun game and goes well with beer. And it is a lot cheaper than golf.
Many years ago Marge Schott, then owner of the Cincinnati Reds, made a remark about Adolf Hitler that got her in hot water and made the national news. She was roundly criticized as a racist. She said that Hitler, in the beginning of his rise to power in Germany "was not that bad" and that only later on did he become "bad" and go a little nuts.
Fast forward to 2007 and an NPR essayist and Huffington blog columnist Peter Mehlman, says essentially the same thing. "Hitler meant well for the people of Germany" while he was going about trying to murder every jewish human on the planet. His point while saying this is that George Bush is worse than Hitler because George Bush doesn't mean well and Hitler at least did mean well.
To use Mr. Mehlman's very hip and with-it writing style: Hmm. Ok. Umm. Yeah. At. Least. You. Wrote. For. Seinfeld.
Well, I don't expect a media fire storm because this guy is essentially nobody. But imagine a Clear Channel essayist saying something similar about Clinton, Edwards or whoever. BTW, NPR officially describes him as an "essayist", not a liberal essayist, just an essayist. Yeah, he's very reasonable and level-headed.
Conservatives think that Liberals are wrong. Liberals think that Conservatives are evil.
Cincinnati Reds manager Jerry Narron made a move in yesterday's afternoon game against the Oakland As that was just downright silly. Here's what happened: The Reds were behind by 2 runs (5 to 3) and Josh Hamilton was due up with nobody on base (it was the 8th or 9th inning). Hamilton has been a good player--he was the No. 1 draft pick several years ago and then had problems with drugs and now has gotten back on the straight and narrow. He is being called "The Natural" around Cincinnati because he excels in all 5 areas of the traditional baseball tools and because he kind of showed up after being off the map for several years, like the Roy Hobbs character.
So we have Hamilton due up and Narron decides to pull him in favor of Juan Castro. Castro is hitting .167 and Hamilton had homered earlier in the game. Part of the rationale was that Castro had success against the pitcher. What success? He was 1 for 1. Seven years ago.
Another thing Narron said was that Hamilton hitting a home run still left you down a run and he wanted Castro to get a hit and be a spark plug. Yeah, god forbid Hamilton hits a home run.
Now I'm not going to freak out and call for him to be immediately fired, but that was just weird logic in my opinion.
A normally reasonable and level-headed local talk show host in Cincinnati, Mike MCconnell, put his foot in his mouth this morning. He was railing against various news headlines that read basically "Putin surprises Bush with offer", (about a alternate site in Europe for the missile defense shield that Putin has been angry over). Mike was claiming that was misleading and that it was actually Bush's idea, not Putin's. Well, I looked into the story and it WAS Putin's idea, based on what I read in the articles shown below.
I emailed his show (he's read my emails on the air before) but so far he hasn't addressed the issue. I pretty sure he won't return to the topic to correct himself--it was too large a gaffe to admit to. Most listeners will never know he was wrong. I'm guessing this is how hosts deal with a situation when they go out on a limb on an issue and they're wrong--IGNORE IT.
sfgate article:
From the caycompass (Ap story):
There will be an open auction in France in September to sell off parts of the famous Concord airplane. I'm sure 99.9% of the parts will be out of my price range, but I'd love to get my hands on an emblem or maybe something from the instrument panel. Of course, I won't be in France in September, so this post is very rapidly becoming irrelevant. Yes, in fact it was irrelevant after the first word was typed, but there you go.
And, in an attempt to rescue this post, here's a creepy anecdote regarding the Concord, or rather, the Russian version:
Russia was developing its own version of the Concord the same time as France, known as "Concordia" (very original Russia). An early prototype crashed in a populated area and a part of the plane which had sheered off decapitated a child playing in his yard about a mile away from the crash. I wonder what that part would bring at auction?
Honda snubs greenie weenies...
Sorry for the Tongans but it looks like it was the teenage dumbass' fault, not Ford.Their SUV was HIT by another vehicle, causing it to roll over. Doesn't sound like they attempting a normal turning manuever in the car. Give me the highest safety rated SUV and if it is hit in the side by another vehicle traveling at high speeds, it's going to go over more often than not.
There's nothing wrong with confidence and blowing your own horn every once in a while. In my May 31st entry, titled "The return of Phil Hendrie" I predicted that his new show would be commentary based and not a rehash of his old character-based comedy show.
This article from yesterday, June 4th, covers Hendrie's return to radio later this month.
My prediction from last week:
I'll be checking out his show and will probably have to do so on the net. The show is airing 1am-4am EST. Looks like he is trying to move in on George Norry territory, sans the aliens.
The coronation of LeBron James as the next MJ was consumated last night during a fourth quarter performance that ranks among the best pro athlete performances in history. (BTW Rome continues to have egg on his face for declaring that James is no MJ after game one.) Now, I'm basing this on descriptions by my local sports radio hosts, one of whom saw it live in Detroit, and by Mike Tirico, who I heard say "this is the best thing I've ever seen".
The reason I have to rely on outside descriptions is because I, in a monumental act of stupidity, turned the game off with about 8 minutes to go in the fourth quarter. This was right at the time when James took over the game, playing one on five and winning. So I missed one of the great sports moments in history. I just hope ESPN classic replays tonight.
Phil Hendrie has announced on his blog that he is returning to radio on June 25th. He has signed a deal with talk radio network FM. I haven't heard anything on how many/what stations he'll be on, but he'll certainly be syndicated. TRN has AM stations and I guess the FM is a new thing.
I also have no idea what kind of show this will be. When he ended his radio show last year he said he was finished with not only radio but with the type of show he did (character-based satire). He said he was moving on to TV and movies (so much for that). Will he resurrect his old characters? My opinion is no. I'm betting that he will do commentary/politics infused with some satire. His blog has been nothing but politics with the occasional satire piece. He won't take callers--he hates talk radio callers. They are the very people he ridiculed and generally messed with on his old show. No, he'll try to invent some new type of talk show without callers and without his old characters.
Just got back from the Dentist where I was informed that I need to go back on 3 month visits in order to maintain my peridontal crap. That's when your gums recede. Fuck. Not that I care about going more often, but I will have to pay more due to more visits that the insurance will not cover.
Dentistry has to be the best gig out there. Everybody's got a set of teeth.
My friend Brad (a Pharmacist) has purposefully not gone to a dentist in many years. He insists he can take perfectly good care of his teeth himself. He rinses with Vodka, claiming it kills germs more effectively than the various mouthwashes available. I'm not kidding at all. I guess he's doing an ok job, I never known him to have any cavities.
I don't care if you want to save gas, in fact, I rarely drive over 65, usually around 60, on the highway. But these people are taking it to the extreme and putting other drivers in danger. One of these days a trucker is going to squash one of these pinheads just for the fun of it for tailgating.
Although I'd rather be talking about Danica Patrick and the idea of her slurping milk in this weekend's Indy 500 winner's circle, ESPN's Dan Patrick is a tool of the week candidate. He pulled the classic "leading the witness" deal with Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis on his radio show. He brought up profiling and asked Lewis if his players were being profiled. Then all Lewis had to do was say "Yes, Dan they are". The obvious implication being race, although Danny boy never specified that. But now Lewis says he didn't really mean that, he was talking about profiling them as Bengal players, not as black men. Ok, I'll take Lewis at his word, although usually I would scoff at a next day apology/clarification like this. Patrick, you're a tool.
This was all brought up because Bengals wide receiver Chris Henry was pulled over for not signaling on a right hand turn. And this was on the heals of his being falsely accused of failing a drug test--his test was negative but some numbnut lawyer jumped the gun and said he failed the test. Well, include this lawyer as a tool of the week.
Rome was just talking about LeBron James and how he demonstrated that he is no Michael Jordan by passing the end-of-the-game last second shot off to a teammate instead of taking the shot himself. Rome is a complete ass. How can someone who purports to have a deep knowledge of sports make such an idiotic comment? Has he never heard of John Paxton and Steve Kerr? Jordan in fact passed off a last second shot not once, but twice, to the aforementioned players, during the post-season.
Oh, update, 12:20--now he's mentioning Paxton and Kerr, someone must have clued him in...starting to backtrack slightly...but he's still sticking to his take! Ah, he's "in that situation, he has to take the shot". Um, Jordan did so "in that situation" you dumbass. He's stuck, he made his signature 'take' and now he can't back off it. Hilarious. Yeah, better move on to the O.J. suit story.
Speaking of sports talk show hosts, they really are all a bunch of extremely jealous wanna-bees. Guys who played in high school and could never make it to college or the pros. So they end up talking about it instead of doing it.
And most of them (not all by any means) no very little about breaking down sports and being knowledgeable about which team or player is better, etc. The PTI guys are a prime example--they know nothing about sports. Now, I don't either, but I can tell when someone else doesn't. Yesterday they said if the Pistons shut down LeBron James, they win, guaranteed. Well, they nearly lost and James had 4 points total I think, no more than 6 for sure. The Cavs were winning at one point by 10 or 12, with James at that point below 4 points.
