Latest Humorous T-shirt Slogan:
"You Wish!"
This one has to be taken in context to be appreciated. The girl wearing this belly shirt was maybe 5'0" tall, with a muffin top going on, despite the fact that she
was clearly in her third trimester of pregnancy. In addition she was wearing a thong that came up past her low-rise jeans and pushed her muffin top down over
the edge to really emphasize the roll. I'm not in perfect shape so I don't expect that others should be, but when you are wearing that
shirt, along with the rest of the outfit, you open yourself to scrutiny (and perhaps random looks of horror).
It's fun to hate:
The Soccer Moms who insist that they drive gas-guzzling SUV's for the safety of their children despite the fact that they are 6 times more likely to be in a rollover
accident than any other vehicle. It's like beating your child unconscious with the butt of your gun so that he will remain on the floor, thus making him less likely
to be hit by a random bullet coming through the front window.
When Shadowtwin reigns supreme:
There will be mandatory, passive birth control required to participate in any form of government assistance. If you can't afford to raise your child on your own we are here
to help you, but we must first make sure that your reproductive organs are adequately contained. If you don't like that policy all you have to do is support your kids your
damn self! Vote Shadowtwin!
Wildly inaccurate, yet shockingly precise, predictions based completely on happenstance and arbitrary universal fluctuations. Your Horoscope:
Sagitarius: 11/22-12/21
A typographical error in your Church's newsletter will lead to you performing sex acts on dozens of anonymous strangers in your pursuit of "oral highground."
Capricorn: 12/22-1/19
The stars did recently tell your wife to "listen to her heart" regarding whether or not she should leave you. The stars did not intend for you to listen to her heart. But once you used that bonesaw on her sternum (not trusting the stethoscope which just responded with a cryptic thumping sound), we're pretty sure she made up her mind anyway.
Aquarius: 1/20-2/18
The stars would like to apologize for stating in their last prophecy, "Be wary of the stranger you meet at beach this weekend. The stars aren't sure why, but they don't trust him." Through a cosmic hiccup, that information was supposed to be released this month. The August prophecy should have read, "A dark and handsome stranger will approach you on the beach, profess his love for you, and sweep you away for a jetset marriage. After which you will lead a long, happy, prosperous, healthy life as the Queen of a small island nation." We apologize for any inconvenience this error may have caused.
Pisces: 2/19-3/20
Your new stopwatch will allow you to time how long you can hold your breath underwater down to the thousandth of a second. Unfortunately, poor planning will mean that you are not able to actually share the information with anyone.
Aries: 3/21-4/19
Your innovative new device for beauticians to use while giving pedicures can be wildly successful and make you quite wealthy IF you change the name. Trust us, no one is going to buy a "Ped-O-File".
Taurus: 4/20-5/20
Your Mother always told you to wear clean underwear just in case there was an accident and paramadics had to see them. But as you board that plane today, the stars want you to know that you needn't worry about it. The debris field will be more than 8 square miles, making it impossible to find most human remains. Not to mention that the ensuing fire burned so hot that it disintegrated not only all fabric, but most of the thin metals aboard as well.
Gemini: 5/21-6/21
You just had to get that genital piercing, didn't you? The stars tried to warn you not to, but you went ahead and did it anyway... Now all your worst fears will come to bear when, at a campground this weekend, you run afoul of this guy:
Cancer: 6/22-7/22
The less traveled by areas of the Grand Canyon's north rim offer some of the most breathtaking views of this natural wonder. You will soon find out they also include some of the worst footings and none of the handrails. They do, however, provide equally awe-inspiring, terminal velocity impacts.
Leo: 7/23-8/22
The stars heard your pleas, begging for someone who you could share your love with and embrace for the rest of your life. If you are still single, throw your arms around the closest person to you at 3:44pm GMT on Dcember 9th -That'll be the one. Trust us, you won't have time to be picky...
Virgo: 8/23-9/22
The stars have piled up most of your things on the front porch. You can stay at a friend's house, but you aren't coming back home until you admit what you did and apologize. The stars' Mother was right about you... (you must have really pissed them off; the stars were in tears while they told me this)
Libra: 9/23-10/22
The stars have been doing a little thinking and a lot of math. The population of planet earth is roughly 6,796,590,704. That means that roughly 566,382,558 people share each astrological sign. About 18,620,796 have the same birthday. Based on average life expectancy as many as 248,277 people were born on the same day, in the same year, for every zodiac sign. How can one statement possibly predict the future of all of them? Ehh, fuck it. "A full moon while Venus is rising is an omen of good things to come."
Scorpio: 10/23-11/21
They say you never know how you are going to react to a crisis. After a home invasion this weekend you will: You will scream, "Do whatever you want to my wife, but leave me alone!" You will then create a distraction by throwing your newborn at the assailant as you dive through the window to safety. Now you know. Music lost to history:
Aerosmith - Dream On
When I started doing these, I could never have imagined that I would be putting an Aerosmith song here. Since I was born
in 1974, this song is well before my generation. It was recorded in 1972 and released in 1983 on Aerosmith's Self-Titled Album, but to read the information on it at
Wikipedia most of us would become familiar with it from a re-release in 1976.
Like most of the music being released in the late 60's/early 70's that was pushing the rock-n-roll envelope, Dream
On relies heavily on solid composition and and melody. Before the era of the modern effects processor, these bands
had no distortion to hide behind (or very little), and synthesized instruments hadn't yet made their way into music. In
that way the music always sounds more raw to us today because, quite simply, it was. While it seems laughable to think
about today, music like this was so far removed from the bubble-gum pop of the 50's that it still wasn't accepted into the
mainstream. As the baby-boomers became the target demographic, the rock-n-roll movement really started to pick up speed,
with bands like Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith clearing the path for the much darker and heavier bands like Black
Sabbath.
While I (and most of my generation) are probably far more familiar with the Aerosmith of the late 80's and early 90's, the
reason this song makes it onto my MLtH page comes down to one thing: Age. Not necessarily the age of the song; In fact,
as I sat down to do the research for this today, I had no idea when it was released, but would have guessed (closely) the
mid 70's. Tyler was born March 26, 1948, meaning that this song was written when he was only 24 years old. I'm not sure
why, but I have always thought this song was pretty amazing given his age at composition. I suppose it is human nature to
wax poetic about the days of yore and the imminent passage of time, but the melody sets a mood that makes you feel it
right along with him. As the song nears the end and his lyrics become more more frenzied, you can almost feel the pain
(longing?) in his voice. Listen to it with headphones and no distraction sometime, you'll see what I mean.
I wrote a short bit some time ago about Kelly Sweet's cover of this
song (see the video on Youtube). While I have since gotten over
the initial hatred I felt towards the cover of the song, I still just can't like it. The words are there; she hits the
notes; but I just can't hear it in her voice. As if there is somthing very personal about the song and Tyler's
deliverance of the lyrics that just can't be duplicated. At least to me.
That said, I have heard Aerosmith doing the song with an orchestra, and it also seems to lack the passion of the original.
So perhaps the thing that I like so much about it is the under-produced, raw sound of it, or it may be that I am still
hearing it through the ears of that impressionable youth that heard if for the first time in a dusty old Van with my Uncle
Art. Either way, it seems it is Lost to History.
I Can't Believe it's Not Porn! WhorePresents.comYep, it's not porn. It's not a site with gifts for sale either, which is probably a good thing since I can't imagine that any woman
would be at all flattered to get a gift -no matter how nice- in a box that says "Whore Presents.com" on it.
My reading list changes from time to time, and there are many sites that I visit that are not on the list.
They are listed in the order that I visit them, enjoy!
Shadowtwin.com: July 2005
Sunday, July 31, 2005
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
This started as a comment on a BlackChampagne post. If some thoughts seem more incomplete than usual that is probably why.
I saw the film this morning, luckily for me the children in attendance kept mostly quiet throughout.
I have a completely different take on the movie though, as I watched and loved the original version of it. I have seen it several times in the last five years or so and still really enjoy it. It has a great message and Wilder as Wonka is so eccentric that he might actually be insane.
After having read reviews for the new version I had pretty low expectations. Much to my surprise I actually enjoyed it. While I have never read the book, the fact that both Wilder and Depp played Wonka in the same manner would imply that that is how he is supposed to act. How can you fault an actor for portraying a character as it was written?
The addition of the childhood scenes made this movie better than the original. In the original Wonka was just crazy and there was never a mention of how he got that way. He was a bit darker in the original film also, a quote:
"There's no earthly way of knowing / Which direction we are going / There's no knowing where we're rowing / Or which way the river's flowing / Is it raining? / Is it snowing? / Is a hurricane a-blowing? / Not a speck of light is showing / So the danger must be growing / Are the fires of hell a-glowing? / Is the grisly reaper mowing? / Yes, the danger must be growing / 'Cause the rowers keep on rowing / And they're certainly not showing / Any signs that they are slowing."
That is damn creepy to a five year old, especially when you hear the tone and building frenzy with which it is delivered. The addition of the childhood flashbacks, and the subtraction of the dark undertones, made a lot more sense. If you could say that anything about it actually made sense, that is.
The new version also removed one of the most ridiculous parts of the old one, which I am gonna spoil right here. In the original movie each child is approached by Slugworth and offered a bunch of money to get him an everlasting gobstopper. Charlie, after being viciously demoralized by Wonka and denied the prize he was due, gave the candy back to Wonka. No one, not even a saint, would have done that. Though it was a necessary plot element in the first film, thus making it all the more ridiculous.
The only thing that I really didn't like about the new movie was the way it ended. It made it seem as though the grand prize was to be a slave to Wonka forever; he would never be able to see his family again after all. I suppose that was necessary to the plot, but at that point anyone over the age of about six had to have already figured out the last ten minutes. I guess it was included to tie it up as a nice little family film. Much in the way that Disney destroys films by making the endings absurdly happy.
The Cap Alert Guy gave this one such a good review that I am pretty surprised I like it at all. Though I do wonder where he saw a nude statue, why a mannequin in underwear is a sex offense, who he saw drinking, and what was the one use of the 3 or 4 letter word. There was one instance where someone was about to use a profanity but the audio was removed so that all you could see was a child with his ears being blocked. Of course my ears/eyes might not be quite so in tune with the Devil's handiwork to pick up a passing word. Unless, of course, the use of the word nuts was considered obscene by context, who knows.
Possibly the only thing that was actually worse about the second film was the Oompa Loompa songs. The ones in the first film were cheese-tastic in a way that only a 1970's film can be, but the ones in the newer version seemed like drug induced adaptations of the originals. Though I really doubt a child today would sit through the old songs, which were basically public service announcements, I also doubt that we will be seeing a spike in the piracy of Oompa Loompa songs onto iPods in the near future. The old songs were cute and cheesy, the new ones are just bizarre.
I am still pretty fond of the first movie, but the second movie tied things together a bit more cohesively. I am now curious to read the book to see which version is closer to it. Probably not so curious as to actually read it though.
Now, just for fun, I offer up my initial comment about the movie, before I saw it obviously
The trailers for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory show exactly what the reviews you are quoting say. I know that not everyone in the world, especially children today, have seen the original movie, maybe it will seem new and fresh to them?
My wife is still creeped out by the performance of Gene Wilder in the original movie. The majority of the creepiness is that Wilder doesn't try to do an over-the-top caricature for the role, he is just a guy, any guy, who happens to be extremely eccentric. Wilder does have the crazy hair and pale eyes at his disposal which probably makes it easier but, he still looks human.
I can judge only by the trailers as I have yet to see the film but, my guess is that Depp was trying to combine Edward Scissorhands with the smooth clay Gumby figure when he was acting it out. Of course it should also be noted that he might have stolen the teeth directly from Mr. Ed.
I hope that I enjoy it when I do see it, but if the trailers are representative of the rest of the film I really doubt that will be a possibility.
So do you remember all of those commercials from the 1990's that said, "A diamond is forever."? They lied.
It turns out that the actual lifespan of said diamond is about four years, seven months and three days. That all being based on the date that I gave my wife her engagement ring (Xmas Eve of 2000) to the day that the diamond was noticed to be missing, which was yesterday.
Do you have any idea how bad a diamond ring looks without the diamond? It is not pretty.
I thought the diamond was supposed to last forever. Why is it that the ring is still in decent shape (with the possible exception of missing one of the mounts that held the diamond) while the diamond has vanished completely? Is this some strange conspiracy cooked up by the diamond sellers? Diamonds don't usually just disappear you know.
I know the missing mount might be part of the reason that the diamond has gone missing, probably the main reason really, but it still just doesn't seem right to have my wife, in all her beauty, walking around with a tan line around where her wedding band should be. She is my wife dammit! Hands off! And while I am on that subject, neither her or myself appreciate you gawking at her breasts. Hands off!
Anyway. If a diamond really is forever, shouldn't they come up with a mount that is at least a decade? Failing that, they could at least mention that since the diamond is going to outlast the ring you might want to have it checked on occasion. No one ever told me that when I bought the damn ring. Now I have a wife walking around with a black heart on her left hand where her wedding band should be (of course the black heart was the ring that she wore for years before I actually decided to propose so it's not so bad). Still, the diamond may be forever (wherever you lost it, forever) but the ring is still on the finger. While the diamond is gone...Work on that all you jewelers, we need to make the rings last as long as the diamonds.
Archaeologists have unearthed jewelry that is over 2,000 years old, many of those pieces still have the precious gems intact. Are you telling me that two millennia of technology has worsened the process? Damn lazy jewelers with their damn profit margins.
Kudos to NASA, who released this statement, "NASA: No Flights Until Foam Issue Fixed ". That should be a comforting thought, right? Well, when the article that it leads to is This one, I am not so sure. The last time an American shuttle left the ground heading for space some foam tore away from it, that led directly to the deaths of a bunch of people. What on earth were the people on the ground doing after that? I ask only because,
SPACE CENTER, Houston - NASA grounded future shuttle flights Wednesday because a big chunk of insulating foam flew off Discovery's fuel tank during liftoff  as it did with Columbia  but this time apparently missed the spacecraft.
So they went ahead and investigated the whole spacecraft, yet neglected to look at the weird foam flying off issue? As if they didn't have any knowledge that the foam would rip right off of the craft as it ascended towards the heavens (heavens meant as the clouds)? They had warning, it happened the very last time they tried to go to space...And people died.
This time was going way better though:
The chunk of foam flew off Discovery's redesigned tank just two minutes after what initially looked like a perfect liftoff Tuesday morning. But in less than an hour NASA had spotted images of a mysterious object whirling away from the tank.
Wow, it took only two minutes for this mission to go horribly wrong. Is that a record? Probably not. As I recall the complete annihilation of the crew of the Challenger took only about, what, a minute? Technology is certainly making for better space flight (at least until they want me to board that death trap).
Was something done wrong to make the foam blow away? Were therulterioror motives behind the actions of those involved? I really don't think so. Beyond that, I am pretty sure that it was good old ignorance that caused the problem, as opposed to terrorism. I certainly hopre that the crew make it back alive, yet, it would be a stern, in-your-face moment if they didn't. That may sound crass, but the guy said:
"You have to admit when you're wrong. We were wrong," Parsons said. "We need to do some work here, and so we're telling you right now that the ... foam should not have come off. It came off. We've got to go do something about that."
I didn't put those words into his mouth. Though I would try crazy glue or duct tape before I sent the damn thing out again. It is a death trap as it is, not a lot of people going gung ho to jump on. I might, but I don't really care whether I live or die. Perhaps that should be on thquestionnairere that you fill out. If you would rather live you are not qualified.
I must admit that when I was in my teens I would often fantasize about having sex with one of my friend's Mother. Of course nothing came of it, not that I didn't try, I even busted out the "I don't bite either but I swing a pretty mean tongue" line. Still she wouldn't succumb to my blatant sexual advances. She missed out on the greatest thirty seconds of her life.
But enough about me.
It seems that one mother was into fulfilling fantasies. She invited all the boys over for parties with alcohol, drugs, and sex! The trifecta! I am not sure that it is such a good idea to be giving the juveniles drugs, probably not alcohol either, for those offenses she should be punished, but the sex?
Johnson, who is free on bail, held parties for the boys almost weekly between October 2003 and October 2004, authorities said. She was accused of providing drugs and alcohol to eight boys and having sex with five of them.
Seriously now, those boys are in their teens, they have probably tried to masturbate with anything that they find laying around that has a hole in it. They have probably tried to buy sex from girls in their neighborhood, maybe even ruined an apple pie or two, who knows. Then someone just offers them sex, what are they gonna do? Damn right they are gonna take it. They don't care if they have to fight off the crabs with a machete or scrape the puss away before they dive in, it is sex, the 'Holy Grail' of the teen boy.
As per usual, one of the kids had a big mouth and screwed it up for everybody.
Police said the investigation began after one of the boys told his mother about the encounters, and she reported it to authorities.
I'm sure that these boys have been traumatized by the experience, you know the no strings attached sex with an older woman. They are probably shells of the boys they used to be. That or they are so giddy about the whole experience that they went back for more every week for a whole damn year. I am pretty sure that the sex was consensual, if anyone was coerced into it it was likely not the boys.
Supplying drugs and alcohol to the kids was pretty stupid, but not unheard of. Better judgment could have been used there. But the sex, I am all for it. The woman did nothing more than give them what they wanted, is that such a crime (well I mean it is a crime, I was meaning that to be rhetorical).
An aside about teens and drinking. In my High School one student died as a result of driving drunk. The parents of the rest of the students decided that the best way to keep that from happening again would be to host (supervise really) the parties that they knew were going to occur (homecoming night and the such). There was alcohol at the parties, no illegal drugs though, and everyone in attendance was forced to surrender their car keys upon entering. Everyone had to stay in the designated house the entire night. The parents that were hosting the party had to get notice, in writing, from the parents' of each of the teens in attendance. There were no more deaths due to drunk driving while I was in High School.
That plan (even though I doubt whether it was actually legal, yet everyone knew they were doing it, including the police) had the major problem of requiring the kids to tell their parents that they would be drinking, then the parents had to sign a paper allowing it. No one in my group would dare to tell their parents they would be drinking, much less ask for their approval. Instead we would just take our beer out into the wilderness (there is much of that in Oregon) to get wasted while camping out. In retrospect I am pretty sure that our parents knew what we were up to but thought it better that we do it while camping out than to try to drive home after. Probably a good call.
The same was true of lots of the other groups in my school though. I am not sure exactly how many people ever showed up to one of the supervised parties, but I can tell you that there were times when I saw half the school at a party on the hill. I have rather a humorous anecdote about the hill parties but I will save that for later. I have gone way off topic as it is.
After a week of temperatures 110+ degrees, while the humidity has been steadily rising, the monsoon is here at last.
I am not sure exactly how they calculate when the monsoon finally arrives so I am calling it myself. It arrived at precisely 3:42p.m. today. That is when the black clouds blocked out the sun and the temperature mysteriously dropped about 20 degrees in ten minutes. Not to mention the smell of rain, and not the good kind, the smell of rain that you can only find in an arid region with a lot of pollution. It doesn't rain much and when it does it smells like the billowing smoke from an enormous industrial furnace, at least for the first few minutes.
I don't know the numbers, and am not going to waste the time to look them up, but I would guess that at lest 2/3 of the annual rainfall here comes during the monsoon season. This being the latest the monsoon has arrived since 1977 I am not sure this bodes well for the drought we have been in for the last ten years. Hopefully it will at least cut down on the wildfires that have been happening so frequently for the past few months. Hard to say really, even as I sit typing this the sky is black, there is thunder and lightning, it smells like rain, but not a drop has fallen. Or perhaps it is so damn hot that the water evaporates before it gets to the ground?
An upside, well for a twisted mind like mine, is that the news will start to get interesting again. It is so much fun to watch the dramatic rescues of people who were caught in flash floods. Not because I am really that sick that I want to see people die, no, no, I just love to watch it because the cameras are always rolling from the road, and there is always a sign in one of the shots that says either "flash flood area" or "do not enter when flooded". They had their warning, why are we trying to disprove Darwin?
With the popularity of the World Series of Poker on television, not to mention my insatiable desire to know everything, and be better at it than everyone else, right now, dammit. I was forced to learn how to play Texas Hold 'Em Poker. The game is pretty simple, actually it is much easier than any other poker game that comes to mind. There are certain hands that are good, certain hands that are bad, and certain hands that you wish were never dealt to you.
If you are not familiar with the game I will break it down for you, in a nutshell; to win you have to have the best 5card poker hand, based on two cards that are your own and five that are common. The highest possible hand is calculated based on your cards (and your opponents as well), whoever has the best hand wins. Really a simple game.
The problem with the game comes into play when you are doing your initial bet, after you have been dealt two cards you have to bet. If you have a pair of aces you should be guaranteed of the victory, right? Nope. If someone else has a pair of threes and another three gets dealt during the game your coveted aces will lose to a three of a kind, of threes no less.
I know that I am over simplifying the concept of the game but, there are 300+ page books written about it, odds and all, and that is not the purpose of this post. Without getting into a lot of strategy, I will simply say that a pair, even in aces, is not the best possible scenario. If you have two aces that means that there are only two more in the deck, odds of someone else having one are pretty good. If, however, you have a King and a Jack, you are in pretty good shape for making a straight that is either king or ace high. There is the possibility that you have the pair of aces and will get dealt an ace, but that is unlikely. Most winning hands in Texas Hold 'Em are won by a pair or two pair. The three-of-a-kind is rare, as are all hands above it.
I spent some time learning how to play the game at pokerstars.net, but quickly found that to be either boring or requiring money, depending on the room (I did actually pocket a robust 34 cents for my curiosity while playing with real money though).
The most humorous thing happened when I logged into POGO and played for tokens though. I said to the room, after I had been dealt a King of diamonds and three of spades, "Beware my off suit 3 king". Which got a couple of LOLs from the room, but that was what I actually had. The flop turned a king, seven, nine so I stayed in it. The turn was a 7 of diamonds, but I stayed in it (possible four-of-a-kind at that point ((in sevens, not for me))). When the river came up a King, I told everyone to just fold since I had the hand, they didn't believe me and a raising war happened. I won almost 20,000 on that single hand...even after I told the room what I had at the beginning.
Also it is hard to bluff when playing on the pc. If you take too long they boot you, sunglasses don't mask a damn thing, and for the most part the money isn't real. If you do play for real money however, the bets are more realistic and the bluffs not as often, at least in my meager experience.
My happy, playful, non-aggressive dogs don't do much other than lay around and eat on occasion, yet there must be something in the shots that they get at the vet that changes all of that. Zelda, the younger of the two dogs, the female one as well, was needing to renew her shot status to get new dog tags (If you own a dog and don't care enough to get him/her vaccinated once every couple of years to keep their registration current, you should be put to death without a trial) so the wife took her over this morning. It was, in her words, "a really bad experience." But also, "It only took about twenty minutes.".
Just a quick aside to mention the importance of registering your dogs, if you don't have them registered you will never know where they are once they leave the confines of your yard. Sure the little collar emblem that you made at the local Wal-Mart will have their name and your phone number, but at the point that they are in the custody of animal control you will have to provide records of all of their shots, from their birth to current. If you do not have those documents the dog will have to be given the same shots, again, and likely won't be too happy about it. The shots cost very little (sometimes free) while the registration is only a 10-20 bucks as well. It might seem expensive, but, in the grand scheme of things, isn't the unconditional love of your pet worth 20 bucks every few years? (if you said no you might as well get a one way ticket to the seventh level of hell).
The little puppy Zelda (I call her a puppy despite the fact that she has easily surpassed the first year of her life, not to mention the fact that she can kick the ass of Warlock, who is older than her and triples her in weight) required one of the shots today. The wife took Zelda down to get her shots (and shiny new collar bling) without question.
Warlock did not take their absence well. My wife is the one who chose Warlock from the pound, despite my arguments that he was too big, it seems that he has never forgotten that...Or something... Once my wife (Warlock's master) and Zelda (Warlock's playmate) were gone Warlock just ran around the house whining....Constantly.... In theory that would be a good attribute for your pet (you know, wanting their master and/or friend near them), in practice it kind of sucks. No amount of petting was able to sate his need for the female portion of the household. I was nearly thankful when I had to go to work.
....
The strange thing is that now Zelda will sit under my desk as I type but, she won't go outside. She loves to be petted but, when I do pet her, she is happy only when inside the house. When I try to make her go outside she starts to shake with such vigor that I am sure it is not healthy. You can actually feel her shaking right through her coat! Problem seems to be that she is going to have to pee sometime, I really hope that the sometime happens when she is not in the house....
If I were a religious man I would ask God to knock a few degrees off of the temperature for the next few days, since I am not I just hope that her need to pee overpowers her fear of all that which is not inside the house.
It comes along one day every year, without fail, seemingly oblivious to how it will affect me. The recurrence of my genital warts Today is my birthday, well technically speaking this date thirty-one years ago was my birthday, so it is the anniversary of my birthday. The 31st one of them (in case you are really slow).
Lots of people seem to enjoy much fanfare on the anniversary of their birth, I am not one of them. My idea of the perfect birthday is basically acknowledgement of it by those close to me and possibly a gift from the wife, though the gift from the wife is generally something useful (shoes this year, as my old ones leave a toe or two hanging out currently). Perhaps if I had a very wealthy family that was prone to giving extravagant gifts I would feel differently? I somehow doubt it, though if someone were to gift me a vacation home in France I certainly wouldn't turn it down (I would likely never see it due to the fear of flying and all, still it would be a nice gesture).
The real thing that I am reflecting on is why people celebrate birthdays at all. When you think about it logically it is basically just a countdown to your death. Woo-hoo! Only x more years to go! Isn't that sort of like celebrating the anniversary of the day that the doctor told you that you only had three more years to live? Good times.
Maybe I am looking at it from the wrong perspective. I guess this means that now I only have to work for 34 more years until I can retire! Of course in the coming 34 years the retirement age will get bumped up a couple of times making it so that you have to be 70 or so before you can get Social Security benefits, so I am not even really into celebrating that. Not to mention that I smoke way too much to envision being alive in 34 years, let alone 39+.
The person who really should be celebrating the day is my mom, who was in labor for 23 hours, while walking to and from school in snow three feet deep, uphill both ways. Not only that but her youngest son has made it 31 full years without ever once wearing pantyhose over his head (in this context), standing at the top of a clock tower, with an assault rifle, and shooting innocent people. A claim she might not be able to make at this time next year. Congratulations Mom! Here's to hoping they finally let me buy an assault rifle before my next birthday!
I am getting so damn sick of people punishing dogs for the ignorance of their owners. It's not like we punish children just because they go around killing other people as a result of poor supervision, well, actually, that might be a really bad parallel to draw. When children go bad and start killing people they get punished, and the parents are looked down on by society (as they should be), while when a dog kills someone, the dog is put to death (without question), and the owner is looked down on by society.
The thing is that in both cases it is the lack of proper supervision that leads to the end. Had anyone spent any time with junior (as he was accumulating a cache of weapons in his bedroom) that tragedy might have been avoided. Of course the "might" on this one is up in the air. Similarly, the dog would NEVER have killed a damn thing if it had been raised in a loving home.
You can talk all damn day about how vicious dogs are, I am gonna turn a deaf ear to it. Dogs, like children, are a product of the environment they grow up in. When taken care of and disciplined they will behave just as you want/hope/expect them to. Leave a dog, or a child, to fend for itself for the majority of a couple of months and you are going to end up with quite a different animal.
I think that the owner (in the case of the dog) and the parent (in the case of the child) are far more responsible for the actions than the child or dog. What we really need to do is put some stringent guidelines down regarding the responsibility of parents/pet owners. Failure to control your child/dog, and any subsequent deaths resulting from that failure, will mean your ass is the one in jail. You are the one in charge, after all. You have to beat them into submission while they are young (or use positive reinforcement, yeah, like that works...) to make sure that they fear you more than they fear god. That is how you make a good dog/child.
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (Reuters) - Pit bulls were banned from Rio de Janeiro's famous beaches and other public places in the Brazilian city on Wednesday under new regulations that could eventually make the sometimes aggressive breed extinct in the area.
Many residents own the fearless, sturdy dogs for protection in a city where murder rates are among the highest in the world.
The ban, issued by the state of Rio de Janeiro after more than six years of debate, follows numerous cases of maulings by pit bulls, especially of children. Last year, a pit bull badly injured a 4-year-old girl in the city, while a year earlier another pit bull mauled a 72-year-old woman to death.
Gov. Rosinha Matheus announced a ban on breeding, importing and selling pit bulls and made the registration and sterilization of existing dogs compulsory within the next four months.
In addition, pit bulls, rottweilers, dobermans and fila brasileiro dogs -- purebred as well as mongrel -- can only appear in the streets between 10:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m, and away from public parks and squares.
They can only be walked by a person older than 18 and always on a leash, with a muzzle when in the street. Owners who do not comply can face charges while their dogs will be taken away by police.
According to the Brazilian Pit Bull Club, there are some 30,000 pit bulls in the state.
So, that all being said, can you seriously look at the faces of my spoiled little dogs and think that they could kill anything? Come on, they are little cuties. Sure the little green eyes make them look a bit more vicious, but so vicious that they would waste the energy to get up off of the floor? Probably not. Hell they barely even wasted the time to look up at the camera for this shot, and that is the most they will ever do, outside of licking you or barking at people that they can't get at. Once the people can be reached they immediately either run away or begin to lick like their is no tomorrow. Guard dogs they are not.
Still my life is better for having them, so keep you damn dog on a leash if you can't control, same with your child, and quit spoiling it for the rest of us.
I had long thought that my knowledge of pi to the twelfth number was pretty impressive, those numbers being 3.14159265359 (rounded of course). It turns out that I am really just a slack-jawed country boy.
The headline reads:
Man recites pi from memory to 83,431 places; Japanese counselor breaks his own personal best
I don't really know whether to react with fear or awe. Through a bit of cursory research however, I did find that most people do not count the 3 when talking about how far they have gotten with Pi. That means that my meager 12 digits is really only eleven digits (damn those old twelve digit calculators!). On the up side I do have Pi memorized about 1/7,585th as far as that guy, so, woo-hoo, top 10,000 baby!
I have never really understood the importance of pi in the first place. Sure it is a computational tool that you can use with circles and arcs, but it has been for thousands of years. In fact the Egyptians just gave up on computing it, noting that 22/7ths was close enough. We still use it today for computational purposes but, regardless of how many decimals you go out, it is still about 3.14. Why the hell do we continue to try? Is the theory that the ten-millionth number will round every number before it until we have a 'real' number true? No. That is evidenced by the fact that there are sections of Pi that go on for fifty or more numbers without hitting anything above a 4.
Will the world end once the human race actually factors out Pi? If we make it that long we are likely clinging to threads, but, I do hope so.
Now, just for fun, I offer you the first 50,000 numbers in Pi, as offered by Ball and Claw:
Here in America the date July 4th has some significance, for virtually unknown reasons. In a survey that I saw recently, yet can't find a link to, over half of the kids in America were not able to name the country that the USA declared independence from. Precious.
The actual event has lost so much meaning over the years that it is now more about a day off of work (for some), a day to drink excessively (for myself) or a day to just blow shit up. I know that a couple hundred years have passed since the war that liberated us from the British occupation of the states, but it is pretty simple to draw a few parallels between the British occupation of the U.S. in the 1700's and the U.S.'s occupation of Iraq in the 2000's.
In the 1700's (and well before that), we were all just ripping off (and killing) the Native Americans. Every country on earth seemed to have had a hand in it. Name a nationality and marvel at what some representative of that country did to rape, pillage and/or plunder the virgin land and its inhabitants.
Now, instead of ripping off the land, we are focused on the oil. We are the oppressors, yet again. It may be disguised as a "war on terror", that doesn't change the fact that there is no way we would be in the war with Iraq (sorry, the war is over, we are trying to stabilize Iraq) if there was not a lot of oil involved. This is the wrong war to be fighting, at the wrong time to be fighting at all.
If the US media were not involved, and if you were to poll, at random, 1,000 Iraqi people, I bet that the number of them considering the U.S.A. "Liberators" would be a very small number. I bet that number would skyrocket if you asked the same group of Iraqis if the U.S.A. was an invading force that needed to be eliminated.
Iraq hates us, NATO hates us, all of the countries that are not in NATO hate us, what are you going to do now, Mr. Bush? Your legacy may well depend on the next decision you make about the war on terror. If you pull out you negate so many speeches about "staying the course". If you continue to occupy Iraq there will be thousands more dead American soldiers...with no end in sight...I don't care how good you were at the game "risk" as a child, this is life or death. And those deaths should be squarely placed on your shoulders, you made the call to go to war with a country that was no threat to the US, you forced a bill through congress to give you ultimate control, and you can't dig yourself out.
Imagine the praise of the Iraqi's when you finally make the decision to pull out. They will actually have democracy, and not the forced democracy of the oil crazed US, real democracy. I'll call this pipe dreams 101.