Behind the Bar - Bar Jokes: "A seal walks into a bar and asks the bartender for a drink. The bartender asks the seal, 'What's your pleasure?' The seal replies, 'Anything but Canadian Club.'"

This came after a series of e-mails where this person simply could not express what she wanted me to do:

Thank you... sorry for any misunderstanding. Will try to be more clearer.

Allow me to note here that none of these will be made up or altered in any way. There's no need to make this person sound any more stupider than she already is.

(That felt great! I can't express how relieved I am to finally have an outlet for my rage.)

You need Quicktime to ch-ch-ch-check it out. That's my student programmer David in the background. It looks like I'm holding the camera in front of me, until you look at my shadow. One of my fingerprints got on the mirror, and became flagrantly obvious.

Found this in the AIM buddy info of someone I knew back in high school and see occasionally on Caroline St. (the bar street in Saratoga... I think she lives there. I don't mean in Saratoga, I mean in one of the bars). You don't usually expect to find something this well-put in a buddy info... usually it's more along the lines of "WORLD SERIES SINCE 1918..." or a link to their blog, which is pretty pathetically annoying (or annoyingly pathetic, I can't decide).

Anyway...

---------

New rule: American must recall the president. That's what this country needs: a good old-fashioned, California-style recall election.

Now I kid, but seriously, Mr. President, this job can't be fun for you anymore. There's no more money to spend; you used up all of that. You can't start another war because you also used up the army. And now, darn the luck, the rest of your term has become the Bush family nightmare: helping poor people. Yeah, listen to your mom, the cupboard's bare, the credit card's maxed out, and no one's speaking to you. Mission accomplished.

Now it's time to do what you've always done best: lose interest and walk away. Like you did with your military service. And the oil company. And the baseball team. It's time to move on and try the next fantasy job. How about cowboy or spaceman? Now, I know what you're saying, you're saying that there are so many other things that you as president could involve yourself in. Please don't. I know, there's a lot left to do: starting a war with Venezuela, eliminating the sales tax on yachts, turning the space program over to the church and Social Security to Fannie Mae, giving embryos the vote.

But sir, none of that is going to happen now. Why? Because you govern like Billy Joel drives. You've performed so poorly, I'm surprised you haven't given yourself a medal. You're a catastrophe that walks like a man. Herbert Hoover was a shitty president, but even he never conceded an entire metropolis to rising water and snakes. On your watch, we've lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two trade centers, a piece of the Pentagon, and the city of New Orleans. Maybe you're just not lucky. I'm not saying you don't love this country, I'm just wondering how much worse it could be if you were on the other side. So yes, God does speak to you, and what he's saying is, "Take a hint."

As of September 8, this blog's been up and running for two years.

Bill Hicks - Wikiquote: "Here is my final point. About drugs, about alcohol, about pornography and smoking and everything else. What business is it of yours what I do, read, buy, see, say, think, who I fuck, what I take into my body - as long as I do not harm another human being on this planet?"

"I don't mean to sound bitter, cold, or cruel, but I am, so that's how it comes out."

(On Gideons) "Ever met one? No! Ever seen one? No! But they're all over the fuckin' world, putting bibles in hotel rooms! I'm gonna capture a Gideon."

"Anybody here stay in hotels on a regular basis? Can you help me with something - does 'Do Not Disturb' mean 'Knock Immediately' in Spanish?"

"Why is pot against the law? It wouldn't be because anyone can grow it, and therefore you can't make a profit off it, would it?"

I go through periods where I'm obsessed with listening to the various bootlegged performances of his that I can find online. Then I forget about him for a while, and then I'm hooked again. I think I'm hooked again.

(Note: only works in IE)... These bastards are chopping the hell out of the courtyard outside my building. They're connecting the building you see on the right to my building, which the camera is mounted on. I watched them tear 40-year-old trees down with those cranes last week, which I'll admit I found a little sad, even though it was cool as shit.

Frist Stock Sale Raises Questions on Timing: "Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) has maintained for years that his stock holdings in the nation's largest for-profit hospital chain posed no conflict of interest for a policymaker deeply involved in health care matters. He even received two rulings in the 1990s from the Senate ethics committee that blessed the holding of the stock in blind trusts.

"So when Frist decided in June to dump all the stock, and later cited as the reason his desire to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, eyebrows went up among ethics experts and congressional watchdogs. Why did he do it at that time?

"Precisely a month later, after the stock was sold, its price tumbled 9 percent when executives in the company -- HCA Inc., which was founded by Frist's father and on whose board Frist's brother serves -- disclosed that hospital admissions of insured patients were lower than expected, depressing profits in the second quarter."

This guy wants to run for President. Here's hoping this takes him down, and makes his party look stupid.

Pamela Anderson dominates the Web - Tech News & Reviews - MSNBC.com - I've been dreading this day - Pam Anderson is officially Old and Busted. See photo for proof.

Fun With Words: Grammar Foibles: "Facetiously stated, the rule is, 'A preposition is something you should never end a sentence with.'"

Revolution Controller Finally Revealed News Story From 1UP.com: "The controller for Nintendo's upcoming Revolution home console system is a cordless remote-control-like device designed to be used with only one hand. Two small sensors placed near the TV and a chip inside the controller track its position and orientation, allowing the player to manipulate the action on screen by physically moving the controller itself. For example, you could slash an in-game sword by actually swinging the controller from side to side, turn a race car just by twisting your wrist, or aim your gun in a shooter by pointing the controller where you want to fire."

I love video games, even though I barely play them anymore. That's bound to change when the next-gen systems come out. In fact, it's kind of the main reason I bought such a huge frickin' TV. This Nintendo controller looks cool. Imagine having one of those things in each hand and playing some kind of game where you carry a sword and shield or something... damn cool. What about a first-person boxing game? Hooray!

That is, if you feel like it. It's about the Valerie Plame/Karl Rove thing. Can't hurt, I guess.

Petition

What I put in the "Your message to President Bush (optional)" box:

It's been extremely satisfying to see your polls numbers continue their slide, as more and more people who voted for you realize too late that they made a big mistake. You and the people you associate with see government as just another business venture, a game to be played and won by any means necessary. Someday, I hope we get a leader selfless enough to make decisions based solely on what's right for the country and for the world - not for his or her own personal circle of friends and connections. As the rest of the country seems to be figuring out, that leader certainly isn't George W. Bush.

Beyond Good and Evil - Newsweek World News - MSNBC.com: "Partly the impression of violent anger is the result of the television camera's narrow reticle. A dozen protesters burning an American flag become the image we have of the redoubtable 'Muslim street,' so furious that at any second it may erupt in apocalyptic violence. What those of us who are there on the ground are likely to see is a canned performance for the TV crews, who work hard to keep the small, rather indifferent crowd out of the picture, and ignore the fact that a few yards away normal life, normal business, goes on as if nothing were happening. Because nothing is happening. Just the usual demo by the usual demonstrators."

This makes me want to turn off cable news for good. Life makes so much more sense when it's explained by people who know what they're talking about.

Bush takes blame for flaws in Katrina response - Hurricane Katrina - MSNBC.com: "'To the extent the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility,' Bush said."

I noticed this yesterday while I was watching Fox News (you should try it sometime, by the way - the comedic value is through the roof): There's a general tendency within the media to claim that Bush "took the blame" for the Katrina debacle (note the article headline). That's not really true. Blame is a very powerful word, and it would be appropriate and meaningful if he did use that word. It would probably impress and win over many jaded people right now for him to take a humble step like that.

But he didn't. He said, "I take responsibility." That's a much weaker word than "blame," one that takes a lot less courage to say. Conservative-minded folks, like those who are actually in charge of the "liberal" media corporations, recognize that at this point it would be better for political damage control if he took the blame - so they're conveniently making it seem like he did.

More headphone use leading to hearing loss - More Health News - MSNBC.com: "Researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital determined that listening to a portable music player with headphones at 60 percent of its potential volume for one hour a day is relatively safe."

As in, relative to what I do, which is listening to music via headphones at work all day, every day, and also at the gym after work. I guess I should start paying better attention in my sign language classes.

In Rochester, NY. The sun does a double-take every time it can actually see us through the cloud cover. (Then it usually drops two scoops of reality on us, in the form of winter and more winter).

And I have a windowless interior office.

Why Cheap Gas Is a Bad Habit - Newsweek Business - MSNBC.com: "What this country needs is $4-a-gallon gasoline or, maybe, $5. We don't need it today, but we do need it over the next seven to 10 years via a steadily rising oil tax. Coupled with stricter fuel-economy standards, higher pump prices would push reluctant auto companies and American drivers away from today's gas guzzlers. That should be our policy. The deafening silence you hear on this crucial subject from the White House, Congress and the media is a sorry indicator of national shortsightedness."

...especially since I'm an SUV driver... but this is right. We need to get with the program and stop driving anything that gets less than 30 miles to the gallon, just like the rest of the world. This in turn will force auto makers to more aggressively pursue alternative fuels, and eventually we'll get our big trucks back, only they'll run on hydrogen (or whatever works better).

If you're reading this, you figured out that I'm now at www.mattdanablog.com (either that, or you have me bookmarked, in which case my forwarding URL doesn't matter). You're also in an exclusive club: People Who Actually Visit This Page (PWAVTP). Membership is compulsory. Fines will be issued for missed meetings.

You've also noticed my new logo, and are a better person for having enjoyed its gritty nonchalance.

With friends like these - Bloggermann - MSNBC.com: "The cool, confident, intuitive leadership Bush exhibited in his first term, particularly in the months following September 11, 2001, has vanished. In its place is a diffident detachment unsuitable for the leader of a nation facing war, natural disaster, and economic uncertainty."

Bush did some bad shit just to get himself elected (having a cousin at Fox News who called it for him comes to mind, as does push-polling South Carolina Republicans with the question "If you knew John McCain had an illegitimate black child, would that make you more or less likely to vote for him?"), but (jesus that was a long parenthetical, and this one isn't helping) I was definitely firmly entrenched in Bush's camp after 9/11 after watching him solemnly unite the nation, for once not letting politics get in the way. He was the right leader for that moment -- the three months or so after 9/11 that came before he set the dominoes in motion toward Iraq. Since then, it's been mostly a bunch of shit.

FEMA chief relieved of Katrina duties - Hurricane Katrina - MSNBC.com: "Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown is being removed from his role managing Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, government sources said Friday."

"Brown is being sent back to Washington from Baton Rouge, La. He was the primary official overseeing the federal government's response to the disaster."

...Or, more likely, never ever mentioned ever ever again, ever.

t r u t h o u t - E.L. Doctorow | The Unfeeling President: "I remember the millions of people here and around the world who marched against the war. It was extraordinary, that spontaneous aroused oversoul of alarm and protest that transcended national borders. Why did it happen? After all, this was not the only war anyone had ever seen coming. There are little wars all over he world most of the time.

"But the cry of protest was the appalled understanding of millions of people that America was ceding its role as the last best hope of mankind. It was their perception that the classic archetype of democracy was morphing into a rogue nation. The greatest democratic republic in history was turning its back on the future, using its extraordinary power and standing not to advance the ideal of a concordance of civilizations but to endorse the kind of tribal combat that originated with the Neanderthals, a people, now extinct, who could imagine ensuring their survival by no other means than pre-emptive war."

Read the rest of it, if you have time.

The Lost City - Newsweek Hurricane Katrina Coverage - MSNBC.com: "Bush's many critics will say that the president was disengaged, on vacation, distracted by Iraq and insensitive to the needs of poor black people. The White House blames the magnitude of the storm itself, patchy information on the ground and a confused chain of command, according to a senior Bush aide who requests anonymity in order to speak freely about internal administration discussions. The truth probably lies somewhere in between. Bush is fighting a war, and he is sometimes slow to react, and he may have been lulled by early reports that New Orleans had been spared the worst of the storm. These are all legitimate excuses. Still, we expect more from a president."

Howie Long is Duke Nukem.

If you don't get it, you're just plain not cool.

I got stung by a bee as I crawled into my bed last night. That's right - somehow, there was a bee in my bed, and it stung me. In my own bed. Where's my Red Cross hotline? Stupid hurricane.