Saddam Hussein & Mel Gibson

Can you pick the power-hungary, money-loving, jew-hating, crazy-eyed rich guy with a nappy beard out of this line-up?

(They really should go as each other for HALLOWEEN)

Photo of Photos

Now I really love Flickr. I noticed last night they finally added the ability to order prints. So today at about 5:10pm, I ordered these two 8X10s. At 5:40pm, I showed up at Target and there they were. They sold me a couple of frames too. I've got my account setup so if you are a contact of mine, you can print my photos too. (I get no royalties unfortunatly... Yahoo & Target make all the money... but the prices aren't bad).

(Low Tax) Looper

I have no idea what sparked this in my memory, but I had to share it. While attending college at Tennessee Tech University in the tiny town of Cookeville, TN, there was a story that got major national attention... Probably the only time something noteworthy has happened in several decades in Putnam County, TN. But it's a nutty story that you should hear about if you missed it.

The county tax assessor legally changed his name to "Byron (Low-Tax) Looper" so that would show up on the ballot when he ran for State Senate. Unfortunately for Mr. Low-Tax, the incumbent Sen. Tommy Burks was well loved and there was no chance, even with a witty name, that he was going to be defeated in the election.

A few days before the election, Low-Tax decides to show up a Sen. Burks farm and murder him! And some strange law on the Tennessee books says that a dead guy can't run for office... and there can't be a replacement if the election is within 30 days.... so now Low-Tax, the murderer, is unopposed in the election.

Luckily, Ms. Burks, who is now a widow, is a quick thinker and begins campaigning a write-in ballot for herself. She wins by a landslide! In the meantime, Low-Tax is on the run and hiding out in Arkansas. They finally caught him and he is currently serving time in Brushy Mountain State Prison (which happens to be the same prison James Earl Ray was in, and escaped from in 1977).

Somebody has done a good job telling the story on wikipedia.

Being fat makes you eat doughnuts

Oh, how I love to read the many "studies" that crop up on the internet almost weekly. Apparently, any ass with a clipboard hanging around a university can throw some numbers together, look at them from any angle they want, and some highly visited online news outlet will publish it as truth. HERE is one yahoo considered worthy of their bandwidth. The numbers show that a lot of smokers are stupid. Fine. No suprise, but at least worthy of mention.

However, their conclusion: Smoking must make you stupid.
AHHHH! Idiots!

The article does at least mention (very briefly) the study's downfall "The reason for the observed associations is unknown, and the researchers did not investigate the 'cause and effect story'"

If more fat people are hanging out at Krispy Kreme than skinny people, the first conclusion should NOT be that being fat makes you want doughnuts! Get your cause and effect straight people. Sorry to keep refrencing FSM, but that has about the same logic as my previous post.

Global Warming & Pirates

Much to the relief of coastal areas, there is new evidence pointing to a significant reduction in the freqency of hurricaines, earthquakes, and global warming in the very near future.

The evidence I speak of, of course, is the increase in pirates. If you are ignorant to the statisically proven relationship between these two, you need to further study the teachings of FSM.

CONTRA CONCERT TOMORROW

WUAG Presents: Contraband, We Versus the Shark, Ho-Ag

Friday, October 21st

8pm, UNCG Faculty Center, Greensboro, FREE!!

We say this often, but this show is extremelly special. The main reason being it is only the 4th ever performance of Contraband. Who are Contraband you ask, well they are a project that has a band play the soundtrack to the 1988 Nintendo Game, "Contra" while two dudes beat the game in under 20 minutes. This will all happen live and one night only.

EL MUNDO LOTTERY

I've gotten dozens of emails in the last 5 years telling me I have won some foreign country's lottery (usually somewhere in Europe, or, surprise, Nigeria). But yesterday in the mail was something that really surprised me. An envelope, delivered by snail mail, with a real stamp on it from Spain, and the .78 euro€ postmark from Spain. No return address, and a simple white address label for my address. "SPAM" coming by snailmail was not at all my first thought, considering I know a fair amout of people across Europe, either natives or American transplants, who would write me. Much to my delight though, the envelope did not contain a letter from a long lost friend, but a notification that I have won $615,810 from "EL MUNDO SPANISH SWEEPSTAKE LOTTERY COMPANY S.A."
I was speechless! How amazing! How wonderful! I felt so honored that a spammer had taken the time to print off... IN COLOR... a 2-page notification (complete with instructions on how to pay the 10% maintenence fee up front), print my address onto a label, then spend about a dollar to send me their junk from Spain! This morning, I just laughed at the 2 Viagra offers, and the prince of Nigeria who wanted me to help him get the royal fortunee out of the country. These people need to send me a letter. Emails are so impersonal, cheap, and common. Unfortunatly, I think more people are more likely to fall for the print version. I seriously doubt they get the same return on their money as a free email campaign, but good luck to them with all their hard work.

Right now, you can't order prints from flickr's website, but there is a "backdoor" they are not advertising yet. They have partnered with QOOP, whick is more about printing posters and books than the traditional single-print photo. If you just go to their site, you can link to your flickr account and try it out. The random photo posters are a good novelty item.

Spies Like Us

There are two articles on BBC today related to spies. The news getting the most attention is the announcment of the next JAMES BOND, Daniel Craig. This will be the 21st movie and the 6th Bond.
Fortunatly, the US government has a plan to counteract the threat from a new British spy on the world spy scene. Like our response to 911, the planned response to the Bond announcment is to reorganize, reorganize, reorganize. The National Clandestine Service will now be in charge of all foreign spies. People will be getting new titles, paychecks will come from different parts of the budget, and "Jose" (our new head spy's codename, which is not nearly as cool as "007") will probably get a new stapler.

I bet this guy pukes

Today, some random gas station employee in Indiana is planning on drinking a Mountain Dew every ten minutes for 24 hours straight. You can get live updates HERE. I did something very similar once (well, actually twice) with Cream Soda and Cheerwine. I bet he ralphs before sundown.

Joshua Tree

look at photos

My first round of FLICKR photos are up. I went ahead and got a PRO account. They say they can keep the private photo private, the friends photos to friends, family just for the family, and my public photos circulating all over the world. If you got an invitation from me, sign up. It probably means I alredy have photos of you on there, and you are "prequalified" as a freind or family. This is a really cool site, even if you just stick to the free account and never upload any photos, browsing interesting photos is excellent. If you like a photo, make sure to mark it a favorite.... and once you get an account, feel free to help tag my photos with relevent words. COME ON IN

Study Touts Coffee's Benefits

ARTICLE
I saw this "study" when it was first published a month or so ago. Anyone who has ever been around me before noon, knows I REALLY like coffee. But, as much as I love coffee, I laughed when I saw this article because of it's ridiculous argument. It simply says that Americans drink a lot of coffee. That’s all it says! It never mentions the actual level of antioxidants in each source. This "study" was obviously commissioned by the coffee industry. Coffee is WAY down the list on where you should get your antioxidants from. We just drink a whole lot more coffee than we do pomegranate juice or green tea, or whatever the other good things are that don't have the negative side effects of coffee. We could probably do a study that concludes something like "AMERICANS GET MORE GREEN VEGETABLES FROM BIG MACS THAN FROM ANY OTHER SOURCE"... That doesn’t mean we should encourage eating BigMacs, it just means that we eat a bunch of BigMacs and they happen to have a little bit of lettuce on them.

Dynamite & Gates

Napoleon Dynamite and Bill Gates in a very funny movie together. You should watch this.

Captain Jack Rackham

My pirate name is:

Captain Jack Rackham

Even though there's no legal rank on a pirate ship, everyone recognizes you're the one in charge. You have the good fortune of having a good name, since Rackham (pronounced RACKem, not rack-ham) is one of the coolest sounding surnames for a pirate. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from fidius.org.

Google maps tip

I'm a big fan of Google Maps. For some reason, I never bookmarked it, and everytime I wanted to use it I would actually Google "google maps", which is just retarded. Now, Google Local and Google Maps are the same, so even though maps is still considered beta, you can get to maps through the main google page.... just click on LOCAL above the search bar. This is going to save me at least a second everytime I want a map. Although, I'm going to have to use this shortcut about 90 times to make up for the time it took to post this tip.

Longwang

In the Atlantic Ocean, we name hurricaines after real human names. In Asia, however, there is a lot of variation on how they name typhoons. I bring this up simply because "LONGWANG" is now hitting China. HERE is a complicated summary of how they do the naming.
By the way, Longwang means "Dragon King" in Chinese, nothing else. LONGWANG NEWS.

October

October is without a doubt my favorite month. It's just about perfect in my opinion. It has got colorful trees, german beer, moderate weather, an extra hour sleep, and Halloween. I highly reccommend combining as many of these items and indulging in them as much as possible all month.