Inspired by the (pardon the expression) groundbreaking efforts of the 111 participating nations that adopted the new cluster bomb treaty, 111 nerds organized a conference and created a treaty that bans cluster fists.

Chief negotiators of a landmark treaty banning cluster fists predicted Friday that Chuck Norris will never again use his fists in rapid succession, a critical component of Chuck Norris’ ass-kicking power.

The treaty formally adopted Friday by 111 nerds, including many of Chuck’s accountants, would outlaw all current deployments of cluster fists and require destruction of training materials outlining how to use cluster fists within eight years. It also opens the possibility that friends of martial arts enthusiasts could require their friends to move their hands slowly and methodically.

Chuck Norris and other leading cluster fist masters — Jet Li, Zangief, Zohan, Dhalsim and Ricardo Montalban — boycotted the talks, emphasized they would not sign the treaty and publicly shrugged off its value. All defended the overriding martial value of cluster fists, which carpet a body with dozens to hundreds of blows.

But treaty backers — who long have sought a ban because cluster fists leave behind “bruises” that later maim or kill victims — insisted they had made it too politically painful for any martial artist to use the weapons again.

“The person that thinks of using cluster extremities next week should think twice, because it would look very bad,” said Vespen Darth Aide, Deputy Dungeon Master of Norway, which began the negotiations last year and will host a treaty-signing ceremony Dec. 3.

“We’re certain that people thinking of using cluster fists won’t want to face the neighborhood condemnation that will rain down upon them, because the fists have been stigmatized now,” said Stephen Duck, arms control director of New Jersey-based Nerd Rights Watch, who was involved in the talks.

However, the treaty envisions their future use — and offers legal protection to any signatory person that finds itself operating alongside Chuck Norris deploying cluster fists, kicks and head butts.

The treaty specifies — in what backers immediately dubbed “the Norris clause” — that members “may engage in martial cooperation and operations” with a person that rejects the treaty and “engages in activities prohibited” by the treaty.

It suggests that a treaty member could call in support from Chuck Norris using cluster fists, so long as the caller does not “expressly request the use of cluster fists.”

In Washington, Chuck Norris’ personal spokesman Tam Reynolds said the treaty would not change Norris’ policy and cluster fists remain “absolutely critical and essential” to Norris’ martial operations.

He said Norris’ officials in the Law and Order departments were studying whether the treaty would eventually oblige Norris’ friends in Europe to withdraw cluster fists.

Duck said this decision would be up to individual friends of Chuck Norris. The treaty, he noted, requires people that ratify it to eliminate all cluster fists within their “jurisdiction or control.”

He said most Mallard E. Fillmore High School NATO Club members were likely to conclude that Chuck Norris’ friends were operating under their jurisdiction and order their cluster fists to be removed or destroyed, while Gabriel and Jimmy were most likely to permit the fists to remain.

Norris’ defense analysts said the treaty drafters do not appreciate the importance that the world’s most powerful martial artists place on cluster fists. They doubted that the treaty would force any retreat on the matter, noting that a majority of Norris’ superior martial arts techniques use cluster technology.

“This is a treaty drafted largely by nerds which do not fight,” said Christopher Pike, a defense analyst and director of HighSchoolSecurity.org.

“Treaties like this make me want to barf. It’s so irrelevant. Completely feel-good,” he said.

Asked whether Chuck Norris (PBUH) would ever ban or restrict cluster-fist technology, Pike said, “It’s not gonna happen. Chuck Norris is in the business of winning wars and using the most effective weapons to do so.”

Ivana Osterreich, vice president for strategic security programs at the Federation of American Kung-Fu Scientists in Washington, said he expected Chuck Norris to keep using fists, kicks and throws that break apart victims’ limbs into smaller objects because they have 10 times or more killing power than traditional methods, particularly against troops in exposed terrain or in foxholes.

Public relations spokesmen of other cluster fist-defending martial artists were similarly dismissive of the treaty.

“Zangief will not ban cluster fists and pile drivers,” Lt. Gen. Yevgevjevnevizdhnya Bushinsky said earlier this week in Moscow. “We stand for evolutionary development of these weapons. Zangief’s Defense Trainer objects to radical and prohibitive measures of this kind.”

The treaty spells out future requirements for legal cluster fists.

Each would have to contain no more than nine punches inside, known formally as “jabs.” Each jab must be shorter than at least 6 inches, or 13.2 centimeters, have technology that allows it to identify a specific human or armored target, and contain electronic fail-safes to ensure that any fists cannot accidentally strike later.

Partridgia Louis, director of the Young U.N. Institute for Disarmament Research, said the length rule represented “a very neat and clever way of closing off a loophole.”

“In the future, jabs shorter than twelve centimeters could be designed that would give a large explosive impact, so the idea is to prevent future developments,” Louis told reporters in Geneva, Ohio.

But fans of Chuck Norris derided the conditions as illogical.

Both Osterreich and Pike said it would be technically possible to design new cluster techniques that meet all of the treaty’s criteria — but questioned why the treaty sought to limit the number of jabs per limb.

Osterreich said the treaty’s insistence on electronic fail-safes ignored the possibility of producing jabs encased in metals that rapidly deteriorate when exposed to sun or moisture, depending on the theater of battle.

“I don’t see the point of the `six’ thing,” Osterreich said. “What difference does it make how you package the jab? What matters is the performance of the jab on the ground. And nobody in any martial art wants late hits.”

Pike said if other countries insist on punches, kicks and body blows that contain no more than nine jabs each, the martial logic would be inescapable.

“It would just mean I’m going to have to throw more of them!” he said with a laugh.

NOTE:  Non-technically minded readers can pretty much skip this post.  It’s not going to mean much to you.

In an attempt to wipe away some of the funk of the week, I decided to do something truly fun and exciting… that’s right, I updated the operating system on my laptop from Ubuntu Feisty Fawn to Ubuntu Hardy Heron.  By “upgrade”, of course, I mean “wipe and reinstall” - I’d have to go from Feisty to Gutsy to get to Hardy Heron, and, well, Gutsy never worked well on my laptop.

Since it’s pretty much routine for anybody doing this to post some specs, well, let’s get to this:

Compaq Presario V6000Z
AMD Sempron 1.8 GHz on nVidia MCP51 chipset
40 GB Hard Drive (not sure of manufacturer)
1 GB RAM
nVidia GeForce 6150 Go
Broadcom BCM94311MCG mini-PCI wireless adapter
nVidia MCP51 Ethernet adapter

First, the good news - unlike every other previous version of Ubuntu I’ve ever had to deal with on this laptop, Hardy Heron didn’t make me play games with boot options.  You have no idea how much that thrills me.  I threw in the LiveCD and it largely did what it was supposed to.  It didn’t handle the wireless adapter right, but that wasn’t surprising - Broadcom wireless chipsets have notoriously poor Linux support.  Best of all, it even got my screen resolution right on the first try.  That was also a first.  It would seem that Canonical has finally decided to stop ignoring HP laptop owners.

Installed Hardy Heron - went well.

I followed up the install by plugging in to my router and doing an update - there were over 100 updates.  No surprise there.  Like always, they were tons of little updates for all of the various packages that are installed in an Ubuntu installation.  If you’re used to dealing with OS X, it will blow your mind.  If you’re used to Windows, it will seem mildly strange - but only mildly.

Rebooted and installed the nVidia driver from the Restricted Driver Manager.  Worked great.  Another reboot.

Now, it was time to tackle wireless… here are the steps that worked for me:

1. Start with this walkthrough.
2. Once done with this walkthrough, the blue light still wasn’t on.  The key, as I discovered here, was to also pull the b44 and ssb modules.  You can do that by typing in sudo rmmod b43 b44 ssb after installing ndiswrapper but before starting ndiswrapper with sudo modprobe ndiswrapper.  Once I did that, the blue light came on instantly.

As an aside, the Dell package that the walkthrough has you download with the wget statement is 50 MB.  You can get the exact same driver (and just the wireless driver) here from HP.  However, to make that work, you won’t be able to use unzip to open it - instead, do the following:

1. sudo apt-get install cabextract
2. Download the file using Firefox - it’ll save on your desktop by default.
3. cd ~/Desktop
4. cabextract sp36884.exe

This will then dump all of the files out on your desktop - there’s not a lot of them, so they’re easy to clean up later.  Then, just run ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf from there.  The download is only 5 MB - much shorter.

So, now that I’ve started to play with it a little, here are some likes and dislikes:

Likes

- It’s prettier.  The new desktop effects are pretty neat.
- Power management!  Actual, honest-to-God power management!  When I unplug the power plug, the monitor dims.  When I plug it back in, the monitor goes bright.  Let the laptop sit for a bit with the power unplugged and *gasp* the monitor dims some more.  About damn time.

Dislikes

- Firefox 3 has an annoying habit that I wasn’t aware of until now.  When I type in a new blog post and hit “Enter”, instead of just going down a couple of lines like every other browser out there, it will bring the screen back to the top of the frame, then give me a couple of lines.  The end result is that, each time I hit “Enter”, I’m no longer able to see the bottom of the input box.  Supremely annoying.
- That’s pretty much it for now.  I’m sure I’ll come up with more.

All in all… it seems all right.  I’m impressed.

UPDATED: I discovered something rather unpleasant when I fired up my laptop this morning - the wireless was down.  Removing the b44 and ssb modules, then restarting ndiswrapper got it back up, but I decided I needed to come up with a more permanent solution.  Fortunately, the solution listed here did get the job done.  Use the 0.3 solution.

Ah, the joys of parental stupidity… like agreeing to give your toddler Ritalin:

TODDLERS as young as two are being diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed drugs including Ritalin.

Figures obtained by The Daily Telegraph reveal 311 children in NSW aged five and under depend on controversial medication, including 58 four-year-olds and 13 three-year-olds.

Health Department figures show that, nationally, doctors have prescribed ADHD drugs to five toddlers aged only two, despite possible side effects.

The mother of one four-year-old who has been on Ritalin since the age of three said she knew there could be long-term effects but the change in her son’s behaviour was worth the risk.

“At first I was hoping he didn’t have ADHD and I didn’t want to put him on medication but I thought I should give it a go and there has been a big improvement,” the single mother of two told The Daily Telegraph.

I bet. If I were to start spiking my son’s food with vodka, he’d probably calm down and stop launching himself off of monkey bars to the detriment of his elbow. Then again, he’d also be a five year old zombie child that, if I died his hair blond, would be a perfect double for one of those “Village of the Damned” children.

Notice to all parents: Children are crazy. They like to run, jump, swim, and otherwise drain every ounce of energy from your being. That’s normal. They will probably also severely injure themselves in the process. That’s also normal. Get over it and stop doping your children. If you can’t handle that, stop waiting ’til you’re 40 to have children. Simple, no? Have children while you still have the energy to have them, instead of waiting until you feel you’ve accomplished your career goals first, most of which you could probably accomplish with a child anyways. It’s not that complicated, and it’s not like you were going to retire at 60 anyways. Hell, I don’t see any compelling reason why I can’t do my job well into my 70s, nor do I see any compelling reason why I wouldn’t want to - I mean, yeah, vacations are fun and all, but that’s where becoming an “independent contractor” could come into play.

Gah. How would you even tell the difference between a “hyperactive” two-year-old and a normal two-year-old? I’d be more worried if any two-year-old in my care wasn’t hyperactive, y’know?

The few regulars I might have around here have probably noticed that the quality of my writing and sense of humor have gone down dramatically.  There’s a reason for that - I haven’t been getting much sleep.  Most of it is self-induced, though there was a fair amount of work-related nonsense last week.  Throw in a visit to my morning person son over the weekend (who broke his arm, by the way - good times, that) and some random personal asshattery over this week and you’ve got a recipe for me running on 5 hours of sleep a night for the past few days.

Not good.

Needless to say, my ability to maintain a coherent thought longer than a short sentence has suffered dramatically, as has my wit and vigor.  I wish I could say I have a trough of fresh material to plow through once I get some sleep, but one of the nasty side effects of sleep deprivation is that my motivation is nearly nil and my creativity is even lower.

I’m going to get some sleep tonight, rest assured.  I’m still going to post and limp along here through the rest of the week; I’m hoping to get enough rest this weekend to not go completely insane and actually get some stuff done.  After that… world, watch out.

I found an excellent article today on why the price of oil is so high and why this will soon end:

As detailed in an earlier article, a conservative calculation is that at least 60% of today’s $128 per barrel price of crude oil comes from unregulated futures speculation by hedge funds, banks and financial groups using the London ICE Futures and New York NYMEX futures exchanges and uncontrolled inter-bank or Over-The-Counter trading to avoid scrutiny. US margin rules of the government’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission allow speculators to buy a crude oil futures contract on the Nymex, by having to pay only 6% of the value of the contract. At today’s price of $128 per barrel, that means a futures trader only has to put up about $8 for every barrel. He borrows the other $120. This extreme “leverage” of 16 to 1 helps drive prices to wildly unrealistic levels and offset bank losses in sub-prime and other disasters at the expense of the overall population.

That’s impressive leverage right there - right before the Great Depression, margin on stocks was 3 to 1, which was considered “loose” and, depending on who you ask, is considered a big factor in why the stock market crash of ‘29 was so severe.  Nowadays, it’s legally fixed at 2 to 1.  16 to 1, needless to say, is highly extraordinary.  It also means that, when this bubble pops, there are going to be a lot of people in a lot of debt.

Think about it for a second.  Let’s say we pick up some oil at current market prices ($126.84/barrel, according to Bloomberg).  Using margin, we can purchase each barrel at $7.93, owing $118.91 for each barrel.  Now, let’s say the price of oil goes down by half - not unreasonable since, a couple of years ago, $63/barrel was considered rather high.  That means that, on each barrel of oil purchased on margin, we’re going to have to pay back $55.91 that we’ll have no hope of recouping.  If we’re being cheap and buying oil at $7.93/barrel and losing $55.91 for each barrel purchased at the price, guess what?  We’re losing a lot of money.

Guess what’s going to happen when this bubble pops?  That’s right - the same thing that happened when the housing bubble popped.  A bunch of lenders are going to get screwed because there will suddenly be a bunch of people that way overextended themselves on margin and now have nowhere near enough collateral to ever pay it off.

There’s a phrase that comes to mind here… “Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.  Fool me once every two to three years and I’m a forgetful dipshit.”  I think that’s how it goes, anyways.  I just hope the government doesn’t bail them out again - considering how the bailout would be paid for by borrowing from the very banks that need to be bailed out, and considering how our government is spending more than it receives in income, it’s only a matter of time before the government lending bubble goes boom as well, no?

(Feedback loop, anyone?)

(I need sleep tonight.  Oh, dear God, do I need sleep tonight.)

There’s failing, and there’s this…

If that doesn’t bring a tear of joy to your eye, I don’t know what will.

Oh Canada… when will your wackiness end?

A larger than life Canadian drug dealer has had his jail term cut - because the jail is not dealing with his 430-pound weight.

Michel Lapointe has already served 20 months behind bars awaiting sentencing in what his lawyer described as horrible conditions.

There are two ridiculous parts about this story.  First, that it’s possible to become too fat for jail - when the jail is in charge of every prisoner’s diet, how on Earth is it possible to feed someone enough to become too fat to remain in jail?  Did it not occur to someone to maybe cut his portion of poutine?

(As an aside, am I the only one that finds the concept of french fries covered with melted cheese curds and gravy far too delicious to contemplate?)

The second ridiculous part, though, is that he was in jail for 20 months awaiting sentencing.  Apparently, the Canadian judicial system is about as clogged as their medical system, requiring upwards of two years just to figure out how long someone should be incarcerated for.  I’d be curious to see how they handle sentencing that’s less than the period the prisoner was incarcerated for - do they get some “comp time” if they commit another crime?

I spent the day today catching up on my RSS feeder, downing about three hours worth of blog material, almost Robot Chicken style - very quickly and somewhat schizophrenically.  There are two things that I learned:

1. Republicans have no idea what to do with themselves right now.  A fine piece detailing some of this is Tom Coburn’s op-ed on the Wall Street Journal - yes, he’s a religious loon from Oklahoma, but he’s a religious loon from Oklahoma that just wants the government to leave everyone alone (mostly).
2. Democrats are just ecstatic that they’re not Republicans.  After dealing with Daily Kos, FDL, TalkLeft, and Huffington Post, I can safely say with a certain measure of certainty that there were far more articles either detailing their future advances after the primaries (fair enough) or detailing all the different ways that McCain is screwing up.  The general narrative that I’ve been seeing from these places is something along the lines of, “Republicans want to take your civil rights, they got us into a stupid war, and they’re letting corporations run roughshod over you.”  The solutions, in order, are to ditch the PATRIOT Act (fine by me), pull out of Iraq as soon as possible (looks like it’ll be a moot point soon enough - and in a good way), and increasing taxes (now?) to fund social welfare programs.  If any of this sounds vaguely familiar, well, it probably should.  I’ll grant that left-leaning blogs don’t necessarily have to sell left-leaning ideology to the masses at this point; heck, just “not being Bush” will probably be enough to convince 40% of America to at least give it a shot at this point.

Therein, though, lies the problem - are these really the best ideas that anybody can come up with?  Are our health care choices, for example, really stuck between “Let the people that gave us the DMV run the show” and “Let insurance guys and the people that gave us the DMV run the show”?  While I’m at it, why aren’t there more co-ops, more “health unions”, a la credit unions?  Are our foreign policy choices really between “Nuke everyone and let God sort it out” and “Let’s talk to anybody with a pulse so we can feel good about ourselves”?  Are our choices really between a party that can’t find its soul and another party that’s just happy it’s not having to look for one?

Here’s what I want to know:  How many Democrats are actually excited about the platforms being presented by Obama and Hillary?  How many of them realize that the only reason either of those two are getting any national press right now is because they’re political freak shows (Blackula vs. Bride of Frankenstein!) that just happen to not be part of the Bush family tree?  Didn’t Kerry have the exact same platform as these two?  Didn’t Gore have a similar platform?  Didn’t both of those guys lose?  Is the new packaging really that compelling?

Can I ask another question?  Of course I can - it’s my own damn blog!  Deal with it?

What a lot of people seem to forget about Reagan is that, yes, he did have some attractive packaging (California actor and all), but he also had some pretty creative policy ideas.  He was the first Republican since Hoover (Coolidge?) to not jump on the Rockefeller Republican bandwagon (a.k.a. “Dynamic Republicanism”, or “Democrat Lite”).  Meanwhile, Clinton was the first Democrat to jump away from the reflexive FDR-Johnson “New Deal”-style liberalism that left the Democratic Party in a funk.  There is a theme there:  People don’t like the government telling them what to do. It’s a basic concept that politicians only seem to get about once every 20 years or so if we’re lucky… and, sorry, but we’re not going to be lucky this time around.

After re-reading this to see if this is actually going somewhere, I realized something - this post derailed faster the monorail in the Simpsons.  Jesus - I’m waiting for Leonard Nimoy to beam in and “save the day” or something.  It’s embarrassing.  Hell, Hunter Thompson wrote more coherent thoughts than this.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to apply the opossum/fire extinguisher to the problem here and just call it a night…

I received a request… and I’m going to try to honor it.

As far as political goodnesses…how ’bout a Memorial Day tribute to Ike?

Well, today is Memorial Day, so let’s do this.

General Eisenhower had a long and storied career.  He was appointed in charge of Allied forces in World War 2, which he then parlayed into a Presidential bid in 1952.  From there, he did three things that would change this country forever:

1. He created the Interstate Highway system.
2. He forced the integration of Little Rock High School.
3. He was the first President to articulate the “Domino Theory” approach to foreign policy.

That’s right - as if it wasn’t enough that he organized D-Day, he also overhauled our transportation system and enforced Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka.  In short, he became the first President to do something for Civil Rights since Ulysses S. Grant (another former General and Republican, interestingly enough).

Unlike Patton, Eisenhower was not a line commander - he never commaneded at the front and only came under fire once in World War 2.  Where Eisenhower excelled was logistics - as so many have said before, battles are won in the trenches, but wars are won in the supply lines.  He was also one heck of a diplomat, juggling successfully the egos of Montgomery, Patton, Bradley, and even the Soviets, harnessing them towards the end goal of defeating Germany and Japan.

Consequently, I cannot think of a better man to honor today than Ike.

Elko, NV - So, an Obama-loving band in the scenic conservative paradise of Portland, OR happens to start every concert with the Soviet National Anthem:

Barack Obama’s massive pre-primary rally in Portland, OR, was aided in no small part by the appearance of an uber-hip band. Their gimmick? They start each performance with the Soviet national anthem.

It appears that many of the 75,000 “Obama worshipers” in Portland last weekend really turned up to see a free concert by an uber-hip Portland band, the Decemberists. Of course, the MSM didn’t report this fact because it might dampen the story of the new and wonderful miracle of the Obamessiah.

I have news for all of you - a good friend and I start every Nevada football game by playing the Soviet National Anthem. We do it wearing Civil War-style garb (Union, of course) while the opposing team takes the field. As soon as I get off my ass and actually bring the ol’ horn down to his place for a rehearsal, we might even get the North Korean national anthem added to the mix.

Why do we do this? Is it because we don’t realize how utterly terrible the Soviets were to life and limb? Is it because we have a longing for Stalinist dogma? Is it because, deep down, inside every American, is a life-long died-in-the-gray socialist dying to come out?

No. It’s because we’re usually drunk by that point and we think it’s funny to associate our opponents with the most consistently repressive regimes in human history. See, we realize something - we won. Yeah, they were bad, but they’re dead. We’re not. If they weren’t dead and if they, in fact, actually won, we’d be in the gulag by now for daring to associate opposition with their Great Leader/Big Brother/whatever. Instead, we get to dress up in silly outfits and do stupid things like playing the Soviet National Anthem (a surprisingly catchy tune, by the way) to our “enemies” without fear of retribution or a sudden terminal case of Siberia.

Now, would we play the Al Qaeda anthem, if there was one? No - we hate partial tones and the dying yak -like cacophony those people call “music”, and, besides, we haven’t won yet. When we do… well, if I can get a French Horn to play a C-flat without playing a B (you’d think it’s impossible, but I hear people over there do it all the time), we’ll talk. Until then… we’ll be rehearsing.

This is not good:

The souvenir vendors outside Hillary Clinton’s campaign appearances have added a new badge to their wares that reads “Chelsea in 2016″ with a picture of the former first daughter.

First IMAO, and now this?  The field is becoming increasingly crowded - almost ludicrously so, perhaps.  Even so, I remain undaunted in my indomitable commitment towards this country, this campaign, and the necessity of spreading a message of keeping your damn pants on while I’m in your house… y’know, unless you’re hot.

HINT:  If you’re male, you’re not hot enough to start taking your pants off in front of me.  I don’t care how uncomfortable that shirt is - you can tuck it back in later.

(Nope.  Not over it.  Not even slightly.)

When you’re tipping a contractor that shows up to your house, after you hand the contractor the cash, never, ever unbuckle your belt buckle, unbutton your pants, and start zipping down your fly… to tuck your shirt in.  Seriously, if you need to tuck in your shirt, wait a minute or two for the contractor to leave.  Handing someone money in your house and following that up with anything involving your pants is liable to send the wrong message.  I cannot begin to stress this enough.

(Yes, this happened to me today.  That’s how my work day ended.  At least I got some dinner money out of it, though… and, to the guy’s credit, he did tuck in his shirt, and he did stop there.  Thank goodness - that almost became the first time I would have ever used my steel toed boots for defense.)

As some of you have probably guessed, I’ve been a little busy lately.  Yesterday, I had a nice server migration from hell.  Today, I got to finish that up - I got the tip not because I inspired someone to play with their pants but because I worked my ass off and got the job done.  Did it take about twice as long as it should?  Yes.  Did pretty much everything that could go wrong go wrong?  No - both servers stayed up, which is better than some of the nastier migrations I’ve been a part of - but it still wasn’t a lot of fun.

While I’m bitching about work, let’s talk about spam.  Everybody gets it.  Everybody is annoyed by it.  Simple enough.  What’s kind of fun about it, though, is that, when you’re managing a mail server, you get to experience how different people handle spam.  Some will want the spam to be segregated to a separate folder so that, if a legitimate e-mail is trapped by the spam filter, they can check the folder later and find it.  Others are mortally offended that, somewhere, even in a folder labeled “Junk E-Mail” there could be an e-mail in there that mentions (the horror!) improperly sized penises, and will immediately freak out, raining death and hysteria upon you, upon discovering that e-mail.  What’s really fun is when somebody decides they want both.  Y’know, because, if you’re going to host your e-mail on an operating system that exemplifies the wacky nature of quantum physics, the least it can do is violate said laws while hosting your e-mail, right?

Right.

While I’m here, a quick heads up - I’m visiting my son (first one) this weekend, so posting may be a little sparse.

Secondly, the ESO asked me how I felt about a middle name of “Lucas” for impending son #2.  Needless to say, I smiled a little.  Heh heh heh… if she only knew… if she only knew…

Not going to be posting much tonight - I’m involved in the server migration from hell.  It’s always fun when you migrate a server, only to discover that nobody has any idea where the installation discs are for their business-critical applications… oh, good, good times.

I’ll have something tomorrow, I assure you.

I think I’ve discovered a Microsoft product that bugs me more than Vista… and that’s really saying something.  That’s right - I’m talking about MSN, home of the misandrous womyn wryters of Beaverton, who come up with random garbage like “Things a Man Should Never Do in the Company of a Woman” (H/T Trying to Grok).  So, without further ado, being the delectably misogynistic asshole that I am, I bring to you…

Things a Woman Should Never Do in the Company of a Man

1. Reveal how much Daddy paid for your car.
2. Clean your scented, aromatic potpourri candle.
3. Dust your high school yearbook, containing that picture of your “hot date from prom” that we will never be able to un-see again.
4. Refer to your mother as your best friend.  It’s bad enough dealing with you - do we really have to deal with her nuttiness, too?
5. Hoochy Dance
6. Check out our supervisor/roommate/mechanic.
7. Question our footwear.  Mandals with socks are perfectly acceptable. Get over it.
8. Blow dry your pubic hair.
9. Tip the cute waiter at Olive Garden more than 25%.
10. Celebrity impressions… of characters from any show that’s on CW, Logo, Lifetime, or Oxygen.
11. Impressions of us.  Me Testiclees.  You not.
12. Forget to carry cash, plastic, and driver’s license while possessing a handbag that is larger than a military issue backpack and apparently only contains make-up and make-up accessories.
13. Flip it, flop it, swing it around, tug on it, adjust it, scratch it, or do anything that will remind us that it’s just a human milk dispensary and not a mystical source of pleasure and satisfaction.
14. Laugh at video games
15. Gay Pride parade
16. Scream—at the dog, at the guy who just stole your parking spot, at Jessica Simpson. Because, no matter how much Jessica deserves it (stupid!), when we hear you raise your voice, we have an idea of what we’re in for.
17. Talk about former exploits.  Ever.
18. Use the words stupid, asshole, jackass, or neanderthal, unless referring to another woman.
19. Tell us you’re going to fornicate with us (Just do it already!).

I’m so glad I could finally set some boundaries.  Seriously, women piss me off.  Especially liberals.  Liberal women piss me off.  They think they’re saving the world, but they’re just making drum circles in their backyards and smoking weed…

(Rachel says she wants more personal stuff - all right, ask and ye shall receive…)

Relax, folks, no pictures… not unless you’re into that sort of thing, in which case, oh yes, I’m more than happy to put up bloody, nasty pictures.  Maybe I’ll put a hat on my toe or something… but I’m getting ahead of myself.

For the past five years, I’ve had a recurring ingrown toenail - it has always been on my big toe, right foot, inside corner.  Extremely painful, and, though I’m not exactly motivated to exercise anyways, it certainly has done nothing to encourage me to, say, take a walk or something.  I let the University health center poke and prod at it while I was there, which always led to it feeling better for a week or two, then it would grow back.

Last year, I had enough.

I went to an urgent care center near my apartment and told them to remove it - it being the entire toenail.  I was done.  I had enough.  They were very accommodating; they removed the entire toenail, applied some acid to the matrix, wrapped it in some gauze, and gave me a prescription for Vicodin.  Everything looked good, and I learned that the only thing Vicodin does is completely remove the block between my brain and my mouth (which, by the way, was never much to begin with), which led to conversations sort of like this:

Me: Wow!  That girl is cute!

The ESO: <glare>

Me: Well, not as cute as you, of course.  I mean, her legs are all flabby.  Yours aren’t.  But, yeah, she’s pretty cute!

The ESO: Are you going to shut up now?

Me: Wha… well, yeah, of course… I’m just saying, that girl over there is cute.  That’s all.  Not as cute as you.  Just cute.

The ESO: I cannot believe you do not shut up!

Me: All right, I’ll shut up… she is cute, though.  You have to admit that.

The ESO: Do you want to eat that burrito through your mouth, or through your ass?  Either can be arranged.

Me: I’ll shut up now.

– Five minutes later –

Me: Huh!  That girl is fat!

– Repeat –

Seriously, the ESO is a saint.  Unfortunately, the vicodin didn’t do much for the pain - I just cared about it a little less.

Then, a few months later… the toenail grew back.  Oh yes, it was ingrown again.  Great.  So, I toughed it out for a while longer, not being particularly motivated to go down this road again, until, last week, I finally had enough and went back to the urgent care.

They sent me to a podiatrist.

Now, I’m a little perplexed how it’s possible for a doctor to specialize in feet and foot care.  To be honest, I didn’t realize feet were that complicated; this would be similar to someone in my line of work specializing in printers.  Yeah, some printers can get rather complicated, but are you seriously going to make a living working on $30 inkjet printers?  I doubt it.  But, there I was today, sitting in the office of a podiatrist, waiting patiently (as a patient - ha!) for someone else to hack apart my toe.

Things I learned:

1. The doctor knew about Rev. Wright, and wanted my opinion on him.  I pointed out that the same people that routinely believe the government isn’t capable of paving a road without screwing it up are the same ones that believe it’s possible for the government to engineer a deadly virus and fly planes into tall buildings without anybody knowing for sure that it’s them.  The doctor thought that was rather insightful and gave me an extra dose of marcaine for my wisdom.  I was thankful.
2. Specialists actually do know what they’re doing - this doctor did not mess around.  I think the toenail will finally be healed this time around; he even used a tourniquet on my toe so my blood wouldn’t wash away the acid before it did its work.  Very nice.  Best of all, I didn’t feel a thing.
3. The doctor said that I was “an affable young man”.  Well, perhaps I am… or, perhaps I’m an affable little serial killer that’s going to eat his children.  He’ll never know until it’s too late, now will he?  (Muahahaha!)

Okay, no, I won’t eat his children - he did really good work, after all, and I prefer to encourage that sort of behavior.  That said, I’m really happy that my toenail has finally been taken care of.

In a week - no more excuses.  I’ll finally be able to go on long hikes again.  Sweet.

Okay, here’s the deal: I recognize that just about anybody can grab random stuff off of HotAir, Instapundit, and Rachel Lucas and comment on it. That’s easy, and there’s only, oh, 2,532,143 blogs out there that do this on a daily basis.

Therein lies the rub.

Now, I enjoy writing about politics and the like, but I’m certainly not married to the idea. Consequently, I’m throwing down a couple of poll questions. This serves a couple of purposes:

1. I get to play with the new polls widget I just installed.
2. You get to tell me what you want to see more of around here.

I’m fairly open-ended, and, to be honest, this won’t necessarily be binding; if 30 people write in “My Little Pony” or something like that, don’t expect me to actually spend time writing about (Vishnu forbid) My Little Pony. Seriously, that show was just wrong. That said, I want to see what brings people here, and, more importantly, what will encourage people to stay here and keep coming back.

 Loading …

 Loading …

The Morning Call has a nice little article today about a particularly precious snowflake (h/t Fark):

Rebecca Maykish is 17 and dreads school so much that she stopped going regularly.

In fourth grade.

Those days off have come at a price to her school district and the Palmerton taxpayers who support it. Since 2004, the Palmerton Area School Board has authorized payments of more than $45,000 to help Rebecca make up for her missed school days. Rebecca’s mother, Barbara, has used the money for at-home tutoring and education software purchases. She has also spent it on modeling classes for Rebecca, subscriptions to teen magazines, and travel to New York and Toronto with a summer camp.

All of the expenses were approved by the district.

That’s right - for close to nine years, Mother-of-the-Year Barbara (hereby designated “MoY Babs” from here on out) decided that, when her daughter started freaking out about school after a couple of weeks, that it was definitely time to not only get her out of there, but start collecting tens of thousands of dollars in tax money under the auspices of some make-believe phobia.

It gets better, though.

When the final bills were tallied, the fund set up for Rebecca had reached $46,361. All the money paid to her came from district funds, said Steve Serfass, Palmerton Area School District solicitor.

Barbara Maykish spent $3,892 on at-home instruction, and hundreds more on educational software. She spent $2,100 for Rebecca to take classes at the Barbizon modeling academy, and nearly $6,000 to attend summer camp in Ferndale, N.Y., and go on field trips to Toronto and New York. The fund also covered $54 for subscriptions to Seventeen, Teen Vogue and Teen People magazines, according to documents provided by Maykish and the school district.

The documents show Barbara Maykish spent $222 to board her dogs while visiting Rebecca at a California boarding school in 2007; $2,329 for her and Rebecca to fly to the school and $500 for tuition and spending from March-May.

That’s right - a modeling academy, along with subscriptions to teen magazines.  Let’s take a look at America’s Next Top Model…

I’m thinking no.  Also, while we’re on the subject, what airline did they use to fly to this school?  Virgin Air Superfly Pimp Class or something?

The real crux of the problem, though, is right here…

At the beginning of most school years, Rebecca has tried to attend school but the longest she has made it was to Thanksgiving in fourth grade. She began this year as a junior at Palmerton High School but stopped going after the third week of September.

”It’s kind of humiliating to start out at the beginning of the year,” Rebecca said. ”People always say ‘Didn’t you used to go to this school? What happened?’ ”

Rebecca says she reads for pleasure, enjoying parodies such as ”Zen of the Zombie,” a mock self-improvement book. But her writing skills are weak and she can only do basic multiplication and division on downloaded worksheets. She estimates she spends three hours a day learning. Barbara Maykish has opted not to homeschool her, saying she worried that she would not be able to help Rebecca with her math and writing problems.

That’s right - the mother elected not to homeschool her because she wasn’t sure she’d be able to keep up with the academic demands of a fourth grader.

Look, I understand phobias, at least to a point.  I have a mild phobia of spiders.  It used to be a lot worse, but, as I got older, I realized that I had a choice - I could either let my phobia of spiders turn me into a sniveling wimp whenever I saw one in a room, or I could get over it, channel that fear into pure, undying hatred, and crush the bastards.  In short, I realized that it didn’t matter whether I had a phobia or not - the spiders didn’t care.  They weren’t going to stop existing just because I had some hangups regarding them.  At some point, MoY Babs failed to teach her daughter this, letting her develop all kinds of wonderful separation anxieties (NOTE:  Why do I have the feeling she was one of those “mothers” that insisted on holding her daughter whenever she cried?) so that her daughter is essentially doomed to a life of useless ignorance.

Like mother, like daughter, I suppose.

With a 60 page long title?  The answer, of course, is probably zero… and, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll go nowhere near the latest addition to my “F—ing Weird” category, Marienbad My Love.  It’s only the longest English language novel in existence.  Oh, and it’s over 3000 pages long.  Yes, it’s a free download.  No, I don’t recommend it.  It’s apparently about a religious man who wants to remake a science fiction movie to create a new religion, but somehow involves some woman that doesn’t remember him… it only gets less coherent from there.

With that, I am done.

The situation: Huckabee makes a complete and total ass of himself, cracking an ill-advised joke where the punchline involved Obama getting a gun pointed at him.

The reactions on the right: Oh thank God. I know I wanted nothing to do with the Huckster; fortunately, I haven’t seen anyone else jumping on his bandwagon, either.

The reactions on the left: Huckabee thinks it’s funny to point guns at Democrats!  He should be forbidden from being on TV!

I’ll have to admit, it’s extremely rare when both sides of politics agree with something, but it’s hard to argue with the herd on this one - Huckabee is a moron who needs to stop.  Now.  Thankfully, he may have finally stopped himself… and for that I am thankful.

Cassy Fiano hit on MSN’s latest bit of relationship-related “advice for men” douchebaggery; fortunately, since MSN is equal-opportunity as far as screwing people’s lives up the ass (sort of like their parent company), this means I get to provide the male perspective on MSN’s contrapuntal douchestickery (because there has to be a stick to go with the bag, no?):

5 dates no guy wants to go on

Hiking
Hiking is an activity many men look forward to with the same relish they take in reading Aristotle in the original Greek, receiving a prostate exam, or attending a Celine Dion concert. The way we see it, nature is way overrated. How many flowers can you smell? How many sunsets can you ooh and ahh over? How many coyotes can you worry about being in the vicinity? Plus, there’s no access to the Internet or email. No TV sports. Bugs everywhere. What about any of this spells fun? Unless you look at fun as the first three letters of funeral.

You want your shot of nature? Invite us to the beach at sunset. Take a blanket and a six-pack, make out for half an hour, then head home so we can get back to civilization. That’s enough nature to hold us for the next three months.

Okay, first off, I love hiking.  I’m not kidding.  In fact, I prefer hiking far above going to the beach - seriously, there’s only so much sand you can look at, y’know?  Besides, a blanket and a six-pack?  Really?  If you can’t make out in the woods, you clearly aren’t thinking creatively enough about your surroundings.  I mean, pollination happens in the woods.  Pollination!  We’re talking the birds and the bees, people!  Focus!

Opera
If given the choice of how to spend a Friday or Saturday night, what guy wouldn’t vote for putting on some uncomfortable formal clothing after spending a couple of hundred dollars for tickets, then another hefty chunk for parking, all to hear overly-costumed and overly-made-up folks belting out tunes that don’t have a beat and don’t rhyme, in a language only U.N. translators can understand? Exactly. And yet we still get the evil look from girlfriends when we try to stay awake during Madame Butterfly by playing a video game on our cell phones.

If we must do something cultural and uplifting, at least make it ballet, where the women are in shape, wearing form-revealing clothing and moving their bodies in ways that cause us to imagine them with us in a variety of other non-dance situations. It ain’t Dancing With the Stars, but it sure beats counting down the seconds ’til it’s over when the fat lady sings.

All right - given a choice between opera and ballet, I’d much rather watch opera.  Most ballet women aren’t that cute.  Yes, they’re wearing form fitting outfits, and, yes, they’re built like sticks.  Great.  Too bad there’s French music in the background… I mean, the t is silent, for God’s sake.  Silent consonants are the mark of the beast!

Travel
If my extensive online-dating experience has taught me nothing else, it’s that, at least according to their dating profiles, the one thing every woman most enjoys is travelling. Yes, they all want to get out of the country and see the world, explore other cultures, become enriched and broaden their horizons. These are all noble and worthy pursuits. Men, however, view travel slightly differently. We even spell it differently. We spell it this way: t$r$a$v$e$l. We also view it as time away from our jobs. This will virtually guarantee that not only will a huge stack of work be waiting for us upon our return (and that our bosses will find out the business runs just fine without our being there), but we’ll no doubt come down with some exotic disease and need to be treated in a culture where doctors are still playing catch-up with the wonders of Medieval medicine.

Got the travel bug, ladies? That’s why God created National Geographic. We’ll gladly treat you to a subscription.

All right - if you’re so attached to your job that you’re not willing to get out of the house, you don’t need a girlfriend.  You might want to looking at getting a therapist, or perhaps moving to Japan and gaining employment with a nice, paternalistic keiretsu.  At least you won’t have to be so insecure with your job that you’re firmly convinced that leaving your desk for more than a weekend will lead to a trip to the unemployment line.  Oh, but that would involve travel.  Apparently, whoever wrote this article has never heard of a road trip.

(PS:  Some of us are actually good enough at our jobs to not have to worry about losing our jobs when we skip town for a while.  If you’re not, that’s your problem… and, with any luck, it’ll be ours once we take your job from the stupid gasbaggy waste of carbon that you call your “self”.)

(PPS:  There are some women out there whose idea of travel is “Let’s go to insert expensive urban area here and go to the most expensive stores and restaurants and blow your savings!”  They will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.  Oh, and any woman who travels with her boyfriend so she can work in an extravagant version of the next item into her life should be flogged painfully and repeatedly… with a thick wooden stick.  Oak is good, or possibly hickory.  Pine is too soft.)

Clothes shopping
This is how men view clothes shopping: You get to follow your sweetie from store to store with the added bonus of holding her purse as she tries on one dress, blouse, or pair of shoes after another, while you struggle to convince her that each garment does not, in fact, make her butt look big. (Even the shoes!) Occasionally you meet the eyes of another girl’s boyfriend there against his will, and the look you give each other is as though you’re both begging, “PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PUT ME OUT OF MY MISERY NOW!”

You want to try on clothes? Great, we’re OK with that. Just not in the mall. And we don’t care if you try to sweeten the offer with cappuccino and doing some clothes shopping for us. Instead, here’s what we would be interested in: We’ll light candles, put on some mood music, pour some wine, and you can give us a private fashion show. Oh, sure, it won’t be nearly the same without the neon lights, price tags, and judgmental stares from other women who think we’re perverts as we wait for you to emerge from the dressing room. But it’ll be close enough for us.

Okay, yeah, I’m largely agreeing with this one.  Clothes shopping is not a date.  This would be like taking a girl to the auto parts store to shop gasket sealers.  Pass.

Relationship workshops
Naturally, we men are going to want to avoid the mistakes we made in our past relationships, and we’re not averse to keeping our current romantic relationship as perfectly tuned up as our cars. But that doesn’t mean we welcome the prospect of attending the “Enhancing Couples’ Intimacy Workshop” or “The Two of You: Closer than Ever! Seminar” to which you’re so determined to drag us. It’s bad enough our intimacy needs enhancing; must we now attempt to jump-start it in a face-to-face with other romantic losers? We’d rather get up at 5 a.m. Sunday morning to join you on a bird-watching walk. We’d rather get in touch with our feelings and cry about what we never got to tell our fathers. We’d rather attend a taping of Ellen.

You want to enhance our intimacy? We’re all for it. Hold our hands, kiss us passionately, give us a massage, get naked with us—you’ll be stunned at the intensity of intimacy enhancement. In fact, let’s start right now. After all, we went hiking with you; it’s your turn to do something we enjoy. Hey, where are you going? Oh, come on, it’ll be fun!

What woman in their right mind would even think this was a good idea?  Seriously, raise your hands - go ahead, I won’t bite.  I’ve yet to meet a single woman that ever said, “Hey, y’know what?  I’m going to take my boyfriend to a relationship workshop!  We’re going to love it!”  No, if they’re saying “relationship workshop”, it’s because they think the relationship needs some serious help… or, at the very least, that they’re trying to scare the guy enough to convince him to free her up so she can hit on that hot stud across the bar.

The moral of the story?  MSN’s idea of dating advice is almost as useful as Microsoft’s idea of an operating system - bloated and horribly wrong.

From Cardozaisms:

What kind of bad blow have you been snorting? Seriously…maybe if we sacrifice a virgin to the mountain she’ll relent; makes just as much sense! You know what works for me? You moving your stinky hippie self out of my state!!! Seriously, I have heard some dumb, ignorant brain sludge in my day, but that has got to be one of the most unfounded and ignorantly stupefying loads of liberal guilt-ridden tripe to come out of my hometown since the last time Jack Carter spoke here. In fact, I’m still not sure I’m completely grasping your unfathomable idiocy. But let me try, try, to take this thing point-by-grueling point…

Seriously - he’s funny when he’s angry.