Bile Duct

You should not be here

2006-11-01T17:29:00.000-06:00

You should be at http://www.bileduct.com/blog/ instead. You should have been redirected. Why weren't you?

Oh Where Are You Now...?

2006-07-11T19:13:00.000-05:00

Oh where are you now
pussy willow that smiled on this leaf?
When I was alone you promised the stone from your heart
my head kissed the ground
I was half the way down, treading the sand
please, please, lift a hand
I'm only a person whose arm bands beats
on his hands, hang tall
won't you miss me?
Wouldn't you miss me at all?

The poppy birds way
swing twigs coffee brands around,
brandish her wand with a feathery tongue
my head kissed the ground
I was half the way down, treading the sand
please, please, please lift the hand
I'm only a person with Eskimo chain
I tattooed my brain all the way...
Won't you miss me?
Wouldn't you miss me at all?

Rest in peace.

FatDave's Triple-Bypass Alfredo and The Secret to Making Good Pasta

2006-06-11T22:25:00.000-05:00

OK, gather this stuff for the sauce:

1 stick real butter. I reccomend FatDave's You'd Better Fucking Believe It's Butter brand. If you have a choice, go with unsalted butter, if you don't, no biggie.
1 tbsp. fresh garlic. Garlic powder and garlic salt go on bread only. You don't have to dice cloves, get one of those handy jars.
1 qt. Half and Half
8 oz. grated parmesan. One of those plastic jars like you buy all the time is exactly 8 oz.
Nutmeg.
1 tbsp. or so of corn starch
Water

OK, this first part is kind of emergency preparation, but it's good to be ready unless you don't mind runny alfredo. Take a small bowl (small as you got, or maybe even a small cup) and put the corn starch in it. Slowly add cold water and stir. You want it just to the point that it's runny, not pasty. Set that shit aside.

Take the lid off the parmesan and leave it off.

Melt the butter in a saucepan, lowish heat. Throw in a tablespoon or so of the garlic, more if you like garlic as much as I do. Stir until garlic bits just start to turn brown.

Add most of the half & half. Hold back a half-cup or so in case you need to thin the sauce at some point. Immediately start stirring.

Seriously, don't stop stirring. We're gonna bring it to a boil, but it burns easily, so no more than half-heat and keep stirring. If you've got a double-boiler, use it, but who the fuck has a double-boiler? So just stir. Have somebody call the babysitter and ask "Is he stirring the sauce?"

Once that boils (as in "it has a lot of steam coming off of it" not "It's bubbling all over the fucking place"), dump in all of the parmesan while you continue to stir. That's why we took the lid off earlier. What, you left the foil on the jar, dumbass? FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! THE CREAM'S GOING TO BURN!! OK, it's not that bad, I just like playing up the "keep stirring" bit.

So, now that you've added the cheese, keep stirring until the cheese is melted and creamy. It shouldn't take long, and if you got the cream hot enough you can actually turn off the heat as soon as you've mixed in the cheese.

Now, bear in mind that this stuff is going to thicken a bit as it cools, so what we're shooting for is "a little runnier than I'd like to eat it". So, does it seem too thick? Add a little more half & half. Too runny? Pour in just a little (a little goes a long way) of the water/cornstartch mixture.

Mix in a pinch of nutmeg, pour it over fettucine noodles and serve. Optionally top with steamed broccoli or chicken slices.

Short version: melt butter, brown garlic, add half & half, bring to boil (stirring constantly), stir in cheese until melted. A lot easier than I made it sound, huh?

And save the extra sauce! Refrigerates to a solid, microwaves back to a thick liquid.

Thing about those noodles though.... There's a secret to making good noodles.

First of all, don't use fucking egg noodles. Use semolina noodles. Most real pasta shapes are semolina, so not too tough really. Just don't use those egg noodles that have been sitting in your cupboard since the day after thanksgiving when you made turkey and noodles. In fact, make sure it's fettucine noodles, OK? Maybe angel hair, but don't go pouring alfredo on spaghetti, you fucking savage. Any sauce is good on fettucine though. It is the O Negative of pasta.

And you know how to get your noodles done right? Boil them until they bend easily, then put a lid on the pot and turn off the heat. They'll be done perfectly in 5 to 10 minutes, just long enough to wrap up the sauce.

OK, but semolina noodles and turning off the heat aren't the real secret. The real secret is that when you boil your noodles, you boil them in in just water. No salt, no oil, just plain old water (6 cups hydrogen, 3 cups oxygen). That other shit just keeps the starch from sticking to the noodles. Starchy noodles are good. Not only do they taste better, the sauce sticks to them better. Starch sticks to noodles, sauce sticks to starch, ergo sauce sticks to noodles. And the funny thing is, every cookbook I've ever seen, every cook I've ever talked to, says to either put salt, oil, or salt and oil in the water. I think it's a conspiracy. The master pasta cooks want to keep the secret to themselves, so they lie to people and tell them to put oil in the water. Well, I'm just a programmer, so what the fuck do I care? Water, noodles, then just leave it alone already.

Johnny B. Rotten

2006-03-13T10:57:00.000-06:00

I've never had a problem calling the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame a joke, and now it seems I'm in some pretty good company. Johnny Rotten (aka John Lydon, but he'll always be Rotten to me) of The Sex Pistols has just given a big "Fuck you" to the Hall of Fame.

"They never cared who we were," Lydon said. "They never bothered to correct the incredible fatal, bad mistakes about our legend and legacy in their museum and up until now, they've rejected our nomination for three years running, and now they want a piece of us.
"Well, guess what? Kiss this!" he said, making a rude gesture.
"When I began as a Sex Pistol, there was no Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and suddenly this organization is put on top of us like we have an obligation to them. Well, it's the other way around. Don't use my name to prop up your ... nonsense."

Go Johnny, go, go!

Link to CNN

A Conversation Between Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein and Bob Dylan

2006-02-04T02:46:00.000-06:00

TJ: What's the game, Al?

AE (shuffling): Seven card stud, nothing wild. Dollar ante.

(Everyone throws in a chip, Jefferson cuts the deck, and Einstein deals each player two cards face down and one face up.)

BD (throws in a chip): I'll bet five.

TJ: See your five...and five more.

AE: I call....

(Einstein throws in his chips and deals each player one more card face up)

BD (coughing uncontrolably): I'm out.

AE: Those fucking things are gonna kill you, Bob.

BD: Bitch, I told you, I got a fucking cold.

AE: Yeah, well those cancer sticks ain't helping you none.

TJ: Check.

AE: Me too.

(Einstein deals another face up card to himself and Jefferson)

BD (getting up from table): I'm gettin' a drink, anybody else want anything?

TJ: Can you make me a carbomb?

BD: I don't know how to make a carbomb.

TJ: Well what do you know how to make? (to Einstein): I'll bet ten.

AE (throwing his cards in): Fuck it.

BD: I know how to make a kamikaze.

(Jefferson sweeps the pot chips over to him and begins to stack them)

TJ: What's in a kamikaze?

BD: Vodka, triple sec, and lime juice.

AE: I don't have any triple sec.

BD: Hmmm. I could run and get some?

AE: Nah, the liquor stores close at 8 out here.

(All three men are quiet as they contemplate the situation)

TJ: Don't you hate that?

AE (to Jefferson): Don't...

BD: Hate what?

TJ (grinning): Uncomfortable silences.

AE (throwing a $5 chip at Jefferson): Dude, can you sometime maybe go for like five minutes without quoting Pulp Fiction?

TJ (throwing chip back at Einstein, laughing): Bitch, you know you love it!

AE: Look, do you ladies wanna fuck around all night or do you wanna play some cards here?

TJ: Just bring the vodka over, Bob. It's your deal.

(Dylan comes back to the table carrying a large bottle of Smirnoff)

BD: Anybody got any weed?

My Ever-Hard Buddy

2006-02-01T10:18:00.002-06:00

This is the best spam that's ever graced my inbox:

To: FatDave
From: "Jody Adair" <rtyrrell@gmx.net>
Subject: Show your feelings with your ever-hard buddy
Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2006 13:21:45 -0800

No matter your age and actual performance, you can always do better. And the great news is that now you don?t have to wait ? the soft tab gets into bloodstream, including your buddy, in just 15-20 minutes. Down the little thing and start pleasing her in the foreplay, because minutes later you will win her very personal First Prize. Now you can be up for the entire night, reaching heavens of pleasure for both of you. You can now become the king of the bed (or wherever you use it) ? Fast, safe and easy!

I Owe My Career to Tim Berners-Lee

2006-01-05T02:53:00.000-06:00

Sung to the tune of "Lord Won't You Buy Me a Mercedes Benz" by Janis Joplin

This is a song of great financial import.

I owe my career to Tim-Berners Lee
The man who invented HTTP
He gave it away, but it's spelled big bucks for me
Oh, I owe my career to Tim Berners-Lee

I owe my career to Mr. Larry Wall
If it wasn't for Perl, I'd have no job at all
He built a new language and I answered his call
Yes, I owe my career to Mr. Larry Wall

I owe my career to Steve Wozniak
If not for his computer, I'd never learned to hack
He made me a geek and I never looked back
Oh, I owe my career to Steve Wozniak

Steam Engine Interlude

2005-12-14T13:43:00.000-06:00

Transubstantiation used to come easily to me, but these days I just can't seem to get my beans flowing uphill, if you know what I'm saying. Too much centripetal interference or something. Every now and then I manage to close the window, but even then things tend to get viscous. My kingdom for a menhir!

Still, this is no job for Mysteries Inc. Every now and then you just gotta shovel some dirt into the toilet, you know? And if that doesn't do the trick, well, you can always intensify the context. Otherwise all you have is circumstance, and nobody wants to go down that road without a return ticket. Like they say, there's no undoing what can't be done. They say a lot of things though.

But all viscosity aside, bulk realizations are usually nothing but trouble. One day you're shucking shrimp on the interstate, the next day you're churning ice cream in a dixie cup, and all the while the Magic 8-Ball just keeps saying "outlook not so good".

I dunno, sometimes I think I should just let my hair grow.

The Kids Are Alright

2005-10-21T09:29:00.000-05:00

Something that never ceases to amaze me is people's ability to completely forget what they were like as teenagers once their kids become teenagers themselves. My kids aren't there yet, so my memories of my teenage years are, so far, still intact.

The reason I'm bringing this up is that I just saw a segment on the Today Show about a new study by the CDC into the sexual practices of teenagers. Who ever said research was boring? So here's what The Today Show (and other reputable media outlets) had to say.

54% of males between the ages of 15 and 19 have had oral sex. 52% of females between the ages of 15 and 19 have had oral sex.

And it seems that everybody is up in arms about these statistics, which brings me back around to my opening paragraph. Now see, I'm 35 years old, soon to be 36. My kids aren't teenagers, but there's plenty of people my age who have kids that are. And I remember back in 8th grade, when I was 13 or 14, there was a fair number of blowjobs going around, so this is nothing new. And this was a special school for smart kids. We were the good kids, you see. Now I wasn't one of the popular kids, so I never got blown back then, but it's safe to say that by the time I was 18 I'd done about all there was to do sexually. I don't think that was unusual then and I don't think it's unusual now.

And this is my problem with this new study. The only data anybody is mentioning is really vague. I mean 15 through 19? That may only be 5 years, but they also happen to be the years during which virtually everyone becomes sexually active. A 19-year-old could well be a sophomore in college for fuck's sake. Is anybody really going to be shocked that college sophomores are engaging in oral sex? Honsetly, I'm surprised the numbers aren't much higher than 54% and 52%.

Of course nobody is mentioning the full data. In fact, I couldn't find a thing on it on the CDC website. Maybe they're just slow to put their studies online. At any rate, here's what we don't know about this study:

How many kids were surveyed?
How many were male and how many female?
How were they distributed geographically?
How many were there at each age?
Was their anonymity properly protected?
How did their responses vary by age?
How many of them are also engaging in full-fledged intercourse?

If we're going to know anything about this study, what we need is a graph. Even a very simple one that your average USA Today reader could follow. Something like this:

I should stress that I just pulled some numbers out of my ass there, this is in no way a representation of the actual data (which as far as I know has not yet been made publicly available). I would imagine the actual data would follow a similar pattern though, where numbers progressively rise with age. For that matter, the incidence of parachuting will increase with age too, simply by virtue of having had more time to do it.

But a graph like that still tells us nothing of sample size, which is of course very important. If 75% of the respondents were 18 and 19, that's going to skew the data quite a bit. I'm not saying that's the case (of all the people who can properly conduct a study, I hope the CDC is one of them), I'm just saying it's important information to have. It also doesn't provide any context of other sexual activity the respondents are engaging in. All it does is breaks the numbers down by age, which is a start. It'd be much better than just throwing out two numbers.

The implication seems to be that teenagers are having oral sex before they have full intercourse, possibly as a replacement for it. Again, from my personal experience, this is nothing new. I really don't get what the fuss is all about. I also haven't seen any data presented to support this, though presumably such data exists and the people discussing this in the media aren't just jumping to that conclusion. At any rate, I don't think anybody's ever gotten pregnant from cocksucking, so if they're using oral instead of the real thing, parents should be happy at least for that.

The bottom line is, teenagers fuck. They have for at least the last 30 years, since the invention of the pill and the whole sexual revolution thing. This is not news. The parents of the kids this study was done on were probably fucking in their teens as well. What's the big deal? At some point you just have to accept the fact that your babies grow up. Teach them to be responsible and safe. They will not be traumatized by their first sexual experiences unless you have them riddled with guilt over something that is completely natural.

I'm not going to say that this study was designed specifically to be alarmist, or that the media presenting it is being alarmist, but Christ, could this country be any more fucking uptight?

True Tales of Stupid Fucking Teachers (Part 2)

2005-10-08T04:23:00.000-05:00

From 1990 through about 1994 I attended Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC for short) trying to earn a two-year degree in Data Processing. In my defense, let me say that they expected me to learn arcane system calls on antique mainframes at 8:00am three days a week. Those who know me well know that the only time I'm awake at 8:00am is if I'm still up from the previous night.

In addition to learning IBM 370 Assembler Language and an OS called DOS/VSE/SP that was considered thoroughly horrendous even in 1968, I was also learning COBOL. No self-respecting programmer will ever admit to knowing COBOL, but I have no self-respect, so what the hell. I didn't like COBOL, but a programming job, any programming job, sounded better than being a cook, and COBOL was the only thing they really taught locally. I was a great programmer, having already written code (just for fun, mind you) for 10 years prior to that. Me and two other guys, one of whom would later become my brother-in-law, were the best in the class, and there was a pretty good gap in talent between us and the next guy on the list. Despite this, not one of us graduated.

I can't speak for the other two-thirds of we who called ourselves Foobar Hacking, but the reasons for my dropping out were varied. Mostly it was because I saw COBOL and mainframes as being a dying branch of computer evolution. "Everybody knows this is nowhere" was a phrase often in my head. I knew that a job doing COBOL would take me through fixing the Y2K bug and then pretty much dump me. No new code was being written in COBOL, and therefore the bulk of my work would be maintaining code somebody else had written. Having seen the code that the majority of my classmates shit out, I knew what I was in for wasn't pretty. I had also taught myself C++, which I considered to be a real language. Right about the time I dropped out, I discovered the internet, and I thought that was probably going to be something big. Of course there was nowhere official to learn that stuff, especially not on what a 24-year-old fry cook could pay.

And despite my loathing of COBOL and DOS/VSE/SP, none of the teachers in the DMACC Data Processing program were stupid fucking teachers. One of them I truly respected, and I showed this by being a constant pain in his ass. He didn't care for my rowdy friends and I, but he did respect my programming skills.

Anyway in 1994, I dropped out of the Data Processing program and decided to study something with a future. The immediate future, I decided, was PC networking. At the time Microsoft still didn't have its networking shit together, so I studied Novell Netware, again at DMACC.

Towards the beginning of the first semester, the teacher handed out a sheet with a flow chart showing the various Novell "tracks" one could take. You could choose to be a Certified Netware Associate, a Certified Netware Engineer and a few other things I don't remember. But one of them was for something called UnixWare. I had been screwing around with the internet in all my free time, and for a geek like me who likes to get his hands good and dirty, that meant screwing around with Unix. I thought then, as I do now, that Unix was cool. The teacher went over the flow charts and explained what the various Novell tracks entailed and what classes you needed for each certification. But he never said a thing about UnixWare.

So I approached him after class. Our conversation went like this.

Me: You didn't mention this UnixWare thing, what's that?
SFT: That's Novell's version of Unix.
Me: Well, what do I have to do to get that certification?
SFT: You don't want that certification.
Me: But...the internet runs on Unix.
SFT: The internet is a toy.

Now this was a long time ago, so I can't say that the conversation was word-for-word like I have it above, but the last two lines are, I swear, exactly as they were spoken. Let me say that last one again: "The internet is a toy."

Now it's true that in 1994 the internet pretty much was a toy, an electronic playground for geeks. There are times I wish it still was that way. However, every one of those geeks saw the potential. We knew what the internet was destined to become, and in fact, we were instrumental in helping it fulfill that destiny.

But my Novell teacher didn't see it coming. Novell didn't see it coming either. It wasn't long after I'd dropped the Novell classes (which wasn't long after the "toy" comment) that I heard they had sold UnixWare to a company that would become The Santa Cruz Operation, which then released SCO UnixWare.

Five years later I got myself a job as a web developer, and I was unfortunate enough to have to work with SCO Unix. In a way, the stupid fucking teacher was right. If this was any indication of what Novell UnixWare had been like, I really didn't want that certification.

Whoa....

2005-10-06T03:26:00.000-05:00

Does everybody see the same colors? Does my blue look the same as your blue? Or if I were to see blue the way you see it, would I say "that's not blue, it's red!" Or to me would it be some shade completely unrecognizable and possibly indescribable?

Because if you think about it, it really doesn't matter how we see colors. All that matters is that we learn to recognize them the way we're taught. I point at a color and tell my daughter "green", and she learns what green is, but that doesn't mean her green looks anything like mine. I only know what green is because my mom pointed at a color and said "green". No one can see through another's eyes (or with another's visual cortex) so we have no way of knowing.

Think about that the next time you're really high.

SUV's Down Under

2005-10-02T04:23:00.000-05:00

Are most SUV drivers selfish yuppie fucks? That seems to be the case in Australia anyway.

True Tales of Stupid Fucking Teachers (Part 1)

2005-09-20T03:49:00.000-05:00

These days I'm more partial to "The Walrus and the Carpenter", but for a long long time, from the first time my maternal grandmother read it to me when I was a child, my favorite poem was Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky". I grew up in one of those houses that always had, like all good houses should, at least one copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass kicking around. So by the time I was 10 or 11, I had pretty much memorized Jabberwocky.

Now, for those who may not be familiar with this brilliant little bit of poetry, it's beauty comes from the fact that it is filled with nonsensical words, yet meaning can be derived for most of them via context. Others are combinations of other words, whereby "triumphantly galloping" can be succinctly expressed as "galumphing". Just read the fucking thing if you're unfortunate enough to have never read it previously.

Jabberwocky first turned up in school in about 7th grade. It was in one of our English textbooks. My teacher, Josie Martinez (who was not a stupid fucking teacher and is, in fact, the single best teacher I ever had) chose a student seemingly at random to stand before the class and read the poem. He made it past the first word, "'Twas", then choked hard trying to sound out the alien "brillig". He gave up, sat down, at which point Mrs. Martinez asked for volunteers. My hand shot up, which was very unusual indeed. It should be noted though that this class was pretty tight, and intelligence was actually respected in this school, so these other kids would actually think it was cool that I could nail this. So she called on me, I carried the book up and pretended to read from it (hey, I didn't want to seem like too much of a geek). I delivered Jabberwocky flawlessly. She said, "You've read this before then, huh?" Had it happened today I'd probably have said "no, never heard of it before today" just to fuck with her.

So flash forward a couple years, and I'm a freshman at Herbert Hoover High School in Des Moines, Iowa.

Wait a minute. Brief digression while I slag Hoover High School.

This was a school of fucking retards. It was filled with mindless, soulless preppy fuckwads, and I despised nearly every fucking last one of the Wham-listening-Guess-wearing-Daddy-bought-me-a-Camaro pukes. Now Hoover always looks good on paper because their students get good grades, but trust me, the bar there is set astoundingly low, or at least it was in 1984. Despite my lifelong underachievement (in all my years of education, grade school though college, I can count the times I did homework on one hand) the year I spent at Hoover was the first time I ever got mostly A's (algebra being the exception, I've always sucked hard at math).

So my English teacher in this lovely institutional learning facility was not the shaprest stick in the bunch. I wanna say her name was Mrs. Morgenstern, or Morgenton, or something like that. Maybe it was just Morgan. Anyway, whatever her name was, she taught 9th grade English at Hoover High School in Des Moines, Iowa in the 1984/1985 school year if you want to track her down and tell her I think she was a stupid fucking teacher.

So one of our early assignments was to memorize a poem. We had a week to do this and then we had to stand before the class and recite our poem. I thought this was pretty fucking easy for high school, I remembered doing that in 4th grade, but whatever. Always one to take the path of least resistance, I chose Jabberwocky, which of course I already knew by heart.

So the day comes where we have to recite our poems. I don't remember what the other kids chose to learn, but suffice it to say that nobody did "Casey at the Bat". So, my turn comes, and I already know it was a mistake to have picked a poem that was three times as long and infinitely more complex than the ones my classmates chose. So I go up there and recite the poem to a bunch of clueless preppy fucks with their mouths gaping open.

And when I'm done, Mrs. Morganheimer says, "Wow, that was a really difficult poem, especially with all those old words we don't use anymore."

I gave her a very quizzical "are you fucking kidding me?" look and sat down. Bitch thought that "frumious" and "uffish" were Old English. And she was supposed to be teaching me?

Thankfully, that was the only year I spent at Hoover. After that I got a car and used Dr. Bill's address (behind his mother's back) on all my official forms so I could go out of my district to Lincoln High, which despite being violent and full of metalheads actually made an effort to teach its students something. My grades immediately fell back to their usual pattern of straight C's.

Dr. Bill and Cracker

2005-08-30T09:31:00.000-05:00

Cracker played two shows in the area last weekend, one at the Cubby Bear across the street from Wrigley Field on Friday night, then again Saturday night at the Palatine Street Fest, or as my old friend Dr. Bill calls it, the Palpatine Street Fest.

Now when I say Dr. Bill is an old friend, I've seriously known this guy forever. I've known him longer than I haven't, since we were both 10 years old or so. We haven't seen much of each other for about the last 15 years. We were both busy raising families, geographically separated by between 500 and 1500 miles, and one of us spent about 12 years preoccupied with medical school, which I guess is kinda grueling or something. Dr. Bill is a smart motherfucker though. He knew he wanted to be a doctor since he was a kid, and he made it happen. I'm a pretty smart motherfucker too, but I lack the drive Bill always had. Anyway, from the sounds of it, the kid's become a pretty damn good doctor.

So anyway, I hadn't seen the guy for at least a decade, but we'd always kept in touch over the intertron. He was always prone to singing the praises of this little band Cracker, who I'd known of but not really known the music of, except for their one big hit, Low back in the early 90's. But Bill is a Crackerhead extraordinaire, a fan since back when they had no hits, and in fact since they were Camper Van Beethoven. Well, some of them still are Camper Van Beethoven, but that's another story (and technically another band, even if the lineups are often remarkably similar).

So though he lives in Iowa, when Cracker's playing two nights in a row in the Chicago area, Bill's fucking gonna be there. And since I'm his main dude in Chicagoland, I get to tag along. When he got here, it was as if no time had passed since we'd last hung out.

So a few weeks back, I figure if I'm going to see this band I know very little of, I'd better familiarize myself with the music, at least so I don't seem like a total fuckwad at the shows. I get copies of most of their albums (yes, I still call them albums, and fuck you), and you know what? It's some pretty good shit. Especially the first two albums. That little fucker Dr. Bill was right. I even found myself downloading bootlegs of recent shows. Some of their music reminds me a lot of the Stones, or at least the really good Stones tracks that don't get played on the radio. Good old rock and roll with the occasional country track done better than any country artist could.

Well, Friday night rolls around, and I've been listening to a lot of Cracker, so I'm psyched. After some confusion over when the doors actually opened (that is, we were lied to) we eventually get in, and get right up front, literally leaning on the stage. The opening act was a local bunch called Burn Rome Burn, and were pretty good. Their drummer was actually fucking incredible, and I found myself drooling over his 7-piece Yamaha rig decked out with about 8 high-end Zildjians. Either he's got a good day job or opening for Cracker pays really fucking well, because he was sitting behind probably about 10 grand worth of drum shit. The other cool thing was that they gave away CD's. Didn't try to sell them, just said "here, take some and pass 'em out". Pretty smart move actually.

Eventually Cracker made it to the stage. The place was packed shoulder to shoulder by this point, and the band seriously brought their shit. They played most of my favorites and just beat the fuck out of them. Some of the die-hard fans that were there (pretty much everyone but me) said it was one of the best shows ever, and though I have no basis for comparison, it's hard to imagine them doing better.

It was very hot in there though. Even the band had sweat literally dripping off of them, and well, they're not an enormous fat guy squished in a room with at least 300 other sweaty fucks. I'd been drinking beer all day, and there was no way I could worm my way out to get some kind of refreshment, so I just sweat it out. I worried a little about heat stroke or something, but it's reassuring to know the guy standing next to you could save your life if he needed to. Shit, Dr. Bill could probably remove my appendix with nothing but a pocket knife, a quart of gin, and a rubber band.

At the end of the show, they played an extended version of a song called "I Ride My Bike". It was so extended that it had the Pink Floyd classic "Interstellar Overdrive" in the middle. Now, I'm a huge (yes, really huge) fan of Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd, so I was going apeshit. Well, when I realized that was really what they were playing anyway. It was the last thing I expected, and they kind've eased into it, so at first I was saying "hmmm, this sounds kinda like Interstellar Overdrive..." Soon it was unmistakable, and they even nailed all the freaky harmonic feedbacky stuff in the middle.

The next day we made the long drive up to Palpatine, drank even more beer, and saw Cracker perform another awesome set. The band hung around after the show signing autographs and chatting. I mostly hung back and let the real fans have at 'em, but I did shake David Lowery's hand and told him he ruled and how much I dug Interstellar Overdrive the night before. He gave me a half-hearted "Thanks, man". I probably should've told him how much I liked one of his songs, not one of Syd's. Oh well. Bill got his ticket stub from the night before signed by the entire band and bought a copy of Gentleman's Blues on vinyl, and got that signed too.

Also, I met some really cool people at both shows. Cracker fans are some really friendly folks, it seems. So hat's off to all of you. I'll probably run into you all again the next time Cracker comes through Chitown.

As we wandered back to the car, still somewhat drunk, Bill said to me, "You know, it's good to engage in adolescent behavior with someone you were an adolescent with." True words of wisdom.

FatDave Answers the Questions That Snopes Can't

2005-08-17T12:05:00.000-05:00

Snopes lists these questions as "unanswerable". Well, I can answer them just fine.

Has anyone had to cut off their tongue because it frozen to a flagpole?

Of course, but it's hard to come by exact numbers because people who have had to cut their tongues off rarely talk about it.

DRIED PIDGEON MANURE IF IT MAKES CONTACT WITH YOUR EYE, WILL CAUSE YOU TO GO BLIND?

If pigeon shit is dried in a configuration where it has a sharp point, and this is jammed into the eye, then yes, you will go blind in that eye. Likewise, dried pigeon shit fired from some sort of dried pigeon shit gun can also cause blindness if it strikes the eye. However, as any good catholic will tell you, the quickest route to blindness remains masturbation.

Does urinating on a lemon tree make it grow quicker/better?

No, but lemon juice applied twice daily will make your penis grow thicker/longer and also give it that fresh lemon scent the ladies can't resist.

I just read a blurb that pre-packaged foods can cause people to turn gay because of too much estrogen. If I was only allowed one question for snopes, I would ask if this is true. Is it?

Of course it can! Prepackaged chips and cereal are the worst. The FDA has advised that Wheaties, despite all their athletic jocko posturing, can turn a red-blooded American straight boy into a cock-craving queen after about 3 months of daily consumption. To avoid food-related homosexuality, you should only eat foods you kill yourself. Also, as a general rule, to avoid homosexuality you should try to avoid sex with people of your own gender.

If someone was too eat a huge clump of wasabi paste..Could they choke to death from being unable to breath?

No, but they would likely choke to death on their own puke. It's a little known fact that Jimi Hendrix ate a huge clump of wasabi paste on the night he died.

Also, "breath" is a noun, fuckwad.

People who get bite by a spider then get large bump on their body. The bump then erupps into hundereds of baby spiders. Can that realy happen?

With enough crystal meth, anything is possible.

A friend of mine asked me if I've ever hear of invisible witches or ghosts that suck the blood out of a person's arm while they are sleeping. Apparently, she saw "marks" on her boyfriend's arm and this was the story that he told her.

While the full list of invisible ghosts and witches that accost you while you sleep is far too long to list here, I can assure you that there is a variety that sucks the blood from tiny pinhole-like holes in your arm. These same ghosts will make you fail a drug test and can sometimes spread the HIV virus.

I heard that bananas have a natural chemical that makes you happy. Is it also true that cockroaches can survive an atomic blast?

You're confusing bananas and valium, but don't worry, it's a very common mistake. Cockroaches can survive an atomic blast, but they often become giant rampaging mutated cockroaches that leave a trail of death and destruction through downtown Tokyo.

I'm 19 and from Yuma, Az and I would like to know if this myth I'v been hearing is true? By masturbating it helps the chance by not getting cancer? Is that true?..also I'v hurd other myths about masturbation and don't know if those myths are true or not. But I would like to know about the question I asked befoe.

On the contrary, masturbation will actually cause cancer, along with blindness, hair on the palms, insanity, and acid reflux. The only positive benefit of mastubation is increased muscle mass in the forearm.

IS IT TRUE PEARLS BRING SADNESS

In some circumstances, yes. If your wife is wearing a string of pearls and they get caught in a piece of industrial machinery which then pulls her in and tears her into tiny little wife shreds, then yes, pearls do bring sadness. Unless of course you never really liked her.

Is it true that a girl cannot get pregnant if her mate smokes the seeds of marijuana when he smokes marijuana, please tell me if this is true because a lot of people tell me it is true and a lot of people tell me it's not and I don't know whaether to believe it or not because this town lies a lot. thanks.

Come on, who are you gonna trust? Your parents, teachers, and medical professionals or your pothead friends?

Can cocoa butter get rid of stretch marks?

Yes, if applied with 80-grit on an air-powered orbital sander.

is it true that if you take already been chewed gum and put it in an orange peel and put it in the refigrator for 4-6 weeks and then eat it will it be acid?

Yes it will. Unfortunately it will be H₂SO₄ as opposed to the C₂₀H₂₅N₃O you're probably looking for.

can you tell me how i would analyze the effect each statistic has on the world.

Well, the problem with statistically analyzing the effect of statistics is that in doing so, one creates even more statistics which then exponentially alter the outcome of your original analyses. Think about that the next time you're really high.

Have you heard anything about a palm rub done when someone is shaking or holding hands that indicates they want to have sex with you? It sounds like some kind of secret sex handshake - and I've heard nothing about it till today.

Yes, it involves rubbing the other person's palm with your genitals, and it sends a very clear message of your desire to have sex with them. Of course, it's of utmost importance that you not try any secret handshakes without adequate practice, lest you suddenly find yourself in the company of the Illuminati.

how much would a penguin egg cost to buy and ship to texas email me as soon as you get the answer to this question bcuz i would like to buy a penguin egg so please email me asap!!!

You're in luck. I will ship you one penguin egg* if you send $150 (plus $4.95 shipping & handling) to penguineggs@bileduct.com via paypal.

Is the government really as controlling and secretive as books make them out to be? Are there really tons and tons of secret spies all over the world?

If I told you, I'd have to kill your dog.

I would like to know what does work and what does not work for getting rid of 'hickeys.' Such as the cold spoon trick, toothpaste trick, etc.

Clinical trials have shown that the best results are achieved with the molten lead trick.

Is it true that you are more likely to die from a champagne cork than a poisonous spider?

Well, this depends entirely on your frequency of exposure to each. For example, if you work in the quality control department of a large champagne bottler, and your job is to open every hundredth bottle off the line, then your chances of being killed by a champagne cork are considerably higher. Conversely, if your job involves being bitten by poisonous spiders, you should have a long talk with your old high-school guidance counselor.

Of course, it is a well known fact that a poisonous spider riding on a flying champagne cork spells instant death for anyone in its trajectory.

How long are the intestines?

26.5 inches.

Is Bounce (fabric softener sheet) unsafe to use? Is it on the EPA's hazzardous waste list?

First of all, the EPA's hazardous waste list should be used as a rough guideline at best. For example, nuclear waste, hydrosulfuric acid, and wasabi paste are not on the list at all.

As far as Bounce fabric softener goes, except for the rare cases where it explodes in the dryer, it is safe to use as directed. It is unsafe, however, to use as a tampon.

if anyone understands what im saying please e-mail me at this e-mail adress. does anyone here bilieve that there are aliens in other planets? who really made us is there really a god? im not saying there isnt but who made god? seriously please answer back at me

I'm not sure about in other planets, but it is statistically likely that there are aliens on other planets. They are almost assuredly three-to-four feet tall with leathery grey hairless skin, big bulbous black shiny eyes, and an unhealhty obsession with human asses. Personally, I hope we make contact with an alien race soon, because it will make the Miss Universe Pageant more interesting.

And no, there is no God.

I've heard that it is impossible to take a lightbulb out of your mouth once one puts it in, without either breaking the bulb or dislocating the jaw. Do you know if this is true? I'm counting on you - my husband is really curious, and I don't want to have to drive him to the hospital...

Of course you can get a lightbulb out of your mouth. Especially a small appliance bulb, or flashlight bulb. Duh!

They say that if a person has a pet cat and dies, if the person's body is not found fairly soon after death, the cat, having not been fed, will become ravenously hungry and eat the dead person's face off - JUST the face!

Is this true? My cat often looks me in the face. I used to think he was just being friendly. Now I know he's just sizing me up, like a chef at a butcher shop, waiting for "the big day". Since hearing this rumor, every time my cat licks his chops it gives me the willies!

Well, just take comfort in the idea that the cat will wait until you're dead to eat your face. Unfortunately, the cat may eat your balls at a moment's notice.

* In the event of a penguin egg shortage, one super-ball will be sent in substitution.

Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo

2005-08-08T06:39:00.000-05:00

So I've been seeing commercials for the new Deuce Bigalow movie a lot lately. Every time I see one, it raises two questions:

Who the fuck green-lighted this and why? Was there pent up demand? Were there a lot of people out there saying, "You know, I wish they'd make a sequel to that shitty movie from six years ago"?
In a universe governed by the laws of physics, would it actually be possible to make a movie worse than the original Deuce Bigalow? It seems like to do so would require the discovery of a unified theory of suck, but judging from the commercials, that discovery has been made.

So anyway, I'm watching TV with my five-year-old son the other day, and a commercial for it comes on. Toward the end is a scene of a cat biting Eddie Griffin on the penis. My son burst into violent laughter and loudly proclaimed "A cat bit him on the penis!" It seemed like it may have been the funniest thing he'd ever seen. It was at this point that I realized maybe I'm just not this movie's target audience.

And possibly worst of all, I know that six months from now I'll be in line at Best Buy, and the dumbfuck in front of me will be buying a copy on DVD.

Employee Discounts

2005-07-25T14:28:00.000-05:00

OK, I don't remember exactly who started this, but some car manufacturer decided they were going to offer their employee discount to the general public. Now every car manufacturer in the country, and probably a few outside of it, is saying the same thing. You don't see a car commercial any more without hearing how they now give the employee discount to everyone.

Well this is bullshit if you ask me (which you didn't). If everyone gets the employee discount, then it is no longer an employee discount. Employees are now paying the same price for cars as the general public. Employees, therefore, are getting no discount.

So, what these guys have done is taken away an employee benefit and spun it into a marketing strategy. That's pretty amazing, really. They must think their emplyees are pretty fucking stupid to not notice.

Free Clamshells at Best Buy

2005-07-15T08:21:00.000-05:00

So, ever since getting a DVD burner a few weeks back, I've developed about a 25 disc a week habit. So I was at Best Buy replenishing my stock of DVD-R's. Seems like every time I'm in there, the person in front of me is buying DVD's of shitty movies. I once saw a guy buying Big Momma's House. You know, at what point do you need to own Big Momma's House? Was renting it not enough? Last night it was a dude buying a copy of Aliens Vs. Predator, which by pretty much all accounts, sucked. I figured it must've been priced to move, $1.99 or something. I made sure to check out the tag. It was $29. You know what buddy? Next time just give me the $29, I'll kick you in the balls, and we'll all be in about the same place. I mean fuck, I wouldn't waste the time it took to download Aliens Vs. Predator illegally.

But anyway, it turned out that they were giving away free DVD clamshell cases with every purchase. Just the thing for a loser like me buying a stack of 50 blanks. Technically, there's some shitty movie preview in 'em, but those are going straight in the garbage.

So anyway, I ask the cashier, a hot young black chick, if I can have more than one. She gave me that "you did not just ask me to do that!" look that only black girls can pull off just right. I said "Hey, but they're free!". She said, "Yeah, but I have to give one to everybody!". I figured that, considering she scanned it along with my spindle of blanks. Then, a funny thing happened. As she was putting my receipt in the bag, she grabbed another one and chucked it in, without scanning it. I confessed that I really just wanted the cases. "Why?" she asked. "Um...to put DVD's in?" Kind of a silly question really.

Thing is, now I feel guilty. Not for getting an extra free DVD case, and not for throwing away the shitty preview disc, but because I probably got her fired. She's gonna come up short on her free DVD's, and they're gonna go to the tape. Best Buy surely knows that most of their loss comes from within, and they've surely got cameras trained on the cashiers. When they see her chuck that extra one in my bag, it's curtains.

So, in the unlikely event that you're reading this, hot ex-Best Buy cashier, I'm sorry I cost you your job. I never expected you to actually give me any extras, and was really just messing with you, making small-talk as it were.

Science Fiction Cliches and The Musical Expression Thereof

2005-07-09T17:19:00.000-05:00

So I came across this list of science fiction cliches. About a third of the way down the page is this one:

Eyes that glow (sometimes accompanied by minor-key chords in TV and film)

First of all, there's no such thing as a minor-key chord. There are minor chords, but minor chords exist quite happily in major key progressions (and vice versa), especially when they're built on the 2nd or 6th interval from the key root.

But yeah, they just meant minor chord, why get all technical, right?

Well, because glowing alien eyes are never accompanied by minor chords. They're accompanied by diminished chords. Not only do they have the flat 3rd that the minor does, they also have a flat 5th. That makes all the difference in the world. A minor chord just sounds sad. Are glowing alien eyes sad? No. They're fucking creepy. And for fucking creepy, diminished is definitely the way to go. If not diminished then augmeted (sharp the 3rd and the 5th), which can be pretty creepy too. Throw in a flat 7th and/or 9th for extra fun. If you can work a theramin in somewhere, all the better. Or some synth portamento.

Yeah, so exactly one of my regular readers understands what the fuck I'm talking about. And incidentally, he's probably the only one who will appreciate the sci-fi cliches. I probably just should've emailed this to him, but then I haven't posted anything here in forever.

FatDave's Guide to BitTorrent

2005-06-21T11:42:00.000-05:00

Lately I've been explaining BitTorrent to a lot of different people. Finally, I decided to write up a guide to it, in my own inimitable style. You can read it here.

This may be the first in a series of guides. Then again it may not be.

So Long DVD Decrypter

2005-06-07T05:18:00.000-05:00

So suppose some of your fondest childhood memories are saturday mornings spent with Bugs, Daffy, Sylvester, Wyle E. and Marvin. Now let's also say that you (somehwat reluctantly) grew up (or at least aged a bit) and now you've got 3 kids, ages 5, 3, and 2. You want them to enjoy the same animated violence you grew up on, so you go out and buy The Golden Collection on DVD.

Trouble is, kids and DVD's just don't fucking mix. Doesn't matter how well you think you've locked them up, a shiny DVD is better than the most expensive thing the toy store has to offer. Trust me, I once found a two year old surrounded by DVD's, and which one was he banging against the entertainment center? The special edition of Fight Club which had gone out of print almost exactly one week prior. Thankfully, there's this thing called eBay.

So anyway, you figure you bought the DVD, it is yours now to do what you want with. In fact, it has long been considered fair use to make an archival copy of copyrighted material that you have purchased, provided you don't sell or give said copy to anybody else.

Of course the entertainment companies had a problem with that, so they came up with all kinds of copy potection schemes. Macrovision for VHS, the Content Scrambling System (aka CSS) for DVD. Oh and what the hell, why not throw Macrovision onto DVD's as well, so you can't tape them.

Now, let's digress for a moment and travel way back in time to about 1984. Many of you were probably not using computers circa 1984, but I was. For me it was all about the Apple //e and the Commodore 64. Software piracy was then, as it is now, running rampant. The software companies had a cow, and came up with countless ways to fuck up a 5-1/4 inch floppy disk so it couldn't be copied. Of course they never denied that a user was legally allowed to make a backup copy of the software for personal use, but they set out to make it as hard as possible. An entire industry of high-grade disk copying programs sprang up. If you were there, you surely remember Copy ][ Plus and Locksmith. Every time a company came up with a new copy protection method, the copying programs would put out an update to bypass it. Apple never used copy protection on their own software, not even Appleworks which was easily the best selling software of the time. By the late 80's the software publishers realized they were fighting a useless battle, and copy protection on computer software became a thing of the past. Iit remains so to this day. For example, Microsoft couldn't give a rat's ass how many copies of Windows XP you make, provided you buy a license for each one.

OK, back to the present, or at least the more recent past. It wasn't long after the introduction of DVD that the CSS copy protection was shown to be laughably easy to break. However, not to let a little thing like fair use get in its way, the entertainment publishing industry managed to get a US law called the Digital Millenium Copyright Act passed by congress. The DMCA is full of odious stuff (agreeing to an unread license agreement by opening a software package, outlawing reverse engineering) but perhaps its foulest offense is making it a bonafide crime to circumvent copy protection. There was a huge battle over the above linked DeCSS code, many websites were shut down, and for awhile it was actually argued that it was illegal to even link to the source code. It was ruled that source code is not protected speech. In the most beautiful of ironies, the DeCSS source code was submitted as evidence in one of the trials, and thus became a matter of public record. Last year the publishers gave up and dropped their case.

So anyway, back where we came in, suppose a person bought The Looney Tunes Golden Collection, didn't want their kids to destroy it, and had a legal right to make a copy for their own use. Well, there was still the issue of that pesky CSS to get around. Thankfully, a nice person made an incredibly easy-to-use DVD Decrypter, which he called DVD Decrypter. It was a nice one-click affair, put in a DVD, click a button and it was unscrambled and saved to your hard drive, or if you prefer burned to a blank DVD.

Could this software be used for piracy? Of course, but it also had legitimate uses. It's a favorite argument of the gun lobby that, sure, you can use a gun to commit crime, but they must be kept legal since they have so many other legitimate uses. Seems to work for them, but not for the evil bastards who allow people to back up their DVD's.

Well, anyway they just shut him down. He's no longer allowed to update or distribute the program, and his domain name has been taken over by whatever company decided to crack down on him. Here's a copy of his farewell message. All this thanks to the fact that it is now against the law to circumvent copy protection, even though you and I have a right to make copies of media we purchased for our own personal use.

But you know what I say? Fuck them. And you know what else? A lot of other people say that too. I advise everyone to check their favorite P2P network for DVD Decrypter 3.5.4.0, which will be the final version. Do they not know that they're fighting a losing battle? Does the phrase "363 seeders" mean anything to you? Fuck. Them. Hard.

I Loves Me Some Codeine

2005-05-30T13:28:00.000-05:00

So my entire family's been sick for the last month. We all had the flu around mother's day, got better, then all got sick again. One of my sons got an ear infection that came on so fast and strong it ruptured his eardrum. Apparently a ruptured eardrum isn't unheard of and will heal on its own in a couple weeks with no hearing loss, but it's a little disconcerting to find blood coming out of your child's ear.

He's been on amoxicillin and prescription eardrops for a week or so and is doing fine. I've been sicker than shit though, with no sign of getting better. Finally I decided I probably had something worse than a cold, and when my temperature broke 103, I figured it was time to see a professional.

So it's saturday night of memorial day weekend when I decide this, and I know my doctor's not going to be around until tuesday. I still haven't learned to get sick during normal business hours. Luckily one of our local hospitals has an after-hours care place, kind of an emergency room for non-emergencies. They have a separate emergency room, so you can go to the after-hours place with something like severe cold symptoms and not worry that you're wasting time that could be better spent on that guy with the heart attack and the knife wounds and his kid that ate Raid.

The doctor I saw was a very cool black woman with dreadlocks. She checked me out and said that even though she didn't see any bronchitis or ear or throat infection, it was probably there given the length and severity of my symptoms. So some antibiotics, and prescription antihistimines. Then she asked, "How's your cough, is it bad?" Of course what I heard was "Would you like some codeine?"

I didn't have to lie, because my cough really was bad. It was keeping me up at night and my body ached from the repeated convulsions of my coughing fits. So she says not only is she going to give me codeine cough syrup, she's going to give me a couple refills on the prescription because it's "good to have around". Well shit yeah it is.

Now I don't know if you've ever had codeine cough syrup, but this stuff is one of pharmacology's greatest inventions. I've had Tylenol 3's plenty of times before, and I don't know if the codeine dose in those is lower or what, but they're nothing compared to the cough syrup. Not only does the stuff stop me from coughing, but I get to go to bed wrapped up in a fuzzy velvet blanket of opiate peace. Give me some cough syrup with codeine in it and everything's all right, my troubles melting away into a ball of engulfing, drug-induced warmth.

And this is why I must never try heroin.

But I'm set for codeine for the next few months or so, after which I'll need to get sick again to maintain my addiction. Oh well, life's full of little challenges, isn't it?

Fuck iTunes

2005-05-13T21:42:00.000-05:00

OK, so the last time I wanted to watch a movie trailer online, I had to upgrade my QuickTime installation. No biggie right? But interestingly, this time it forced me to install iTunes. I would think Apple, who has always been a pretty cool company (despite losing their genius-in-charge way back when), would try to distance themselves from Microsoftian tactics like forcing users to install software completely unrelated to the task at hand simply because they want it to become ubiquitous. But still no biggie, because I keep finding free downloads under bottle caps and shit, and I figure I'll probably use it eventually. Every time I open task manager though, I see it there hiding in the background processes, sucking at my precious system processes like a giant quantum tit.

Anyway, today I find out about a free iTunes download for a musician my brother just turned me onto, so I figure I'll see how this iTunes shit works, what the big deal is, why it was so important that I was forced to install it along with QuickTime. I immediately came to the realization that I had to go through some setup.

The first thing it asked me (I think, I'm writing this from memory after all) was if I wanted to scan my hard drive for .mp3 and .aac files. I didn't see a button labeled "Abso-fucking-lutely Not!", so I unchecked the little checkbox. You see, Apple, having still never broken even on the Macintosh (yes, I'm exagerating), has found a new gold mine in digital audio distribution, and they are hell-bent on becoming the defacto standard. Apple would like it very much if all digital music was purchased through them, and this might make them somewhat interested in what other .mp3's I have in my possession and whether or not I actually have the legal right to have said .mp3's. Caveat fur!

The other thing it asked me, I think in the same dialog, was if I wanted it to automatically rearrange all my audio files. Well no, thank you, I tend put my files where I do for a reason, and when I look for them I tend to look for them where I put them. Also, if iTunes moves them, how then will all my P2P clients find all the (completely legal) recordings (of bands who allow their live recordings to be freely distributed) that I share? (Seriously, I'd never consider infringing a copyright, even though I've bought countless CD's at full price to get a single song or two, even though they told us CD's were indestructible and would last forever, even though the RIAA routinely fucks the artists whose backs they ride all the way to the bank.)

All that ugliness aside, I was still onboard with the iTunes at this point. I mean hey, I was going to get a free song and not even have to look over my shoulder or find an open proxy server (not that I know anything about such matters). So eventually I see my song, with the price listed as "free", so I click the download button. Oh boy, now I get to create an account. Yay! Nothing like one more password to have to remember, but what the fuck. I've got email addresses that serve no other purpose than to hand out to likely spammers, so I can create an account without fear.

But then the thing that drove me to declare "Fuck iTunes" from my godforsaken blog happened. It asked for my credit card info.

Now there's so many ways this pissed me off. First and most obviously, why the fuck should I have to give up my credit card info to download a free song? I mean, the chances of me buying music through iTunes is pretty god-damned slim. Not that I wouldn't pay for online music, but I'm not about to pay $.99 a song for music in a lossy format like 128K mp3, or in some format that restricts what I can and can't do with the product that I fucking paid for. They wanna sell me flac files at that price, we'll talk. Of course, they figure if they can get me to give up my numbers now, it'll be easier to get me to buy in the future. Not bloody likely.

Another thing is, even if I were to buy music through their little service, I'd much rather enter my credit card info each time I make a purchase. Now maybe most users don't want to be bothered with this, but if I'm spending money I want to be reminded I'm spending money. I also don't want one of my kids getting in my office and buying a bunch of what passes for music these days because they thought it would be fun to bang on daddy's keyboard. Or hell, cats sometimes get shut in here. I don't want a cat buying Hilary Duff tracks by walking across my desk (and quit chewing through cables you stupid little shit, because if 120VAC doesn't kill you, I will). And most importantly of all, I don't want my credit card info stored on some computer at Apple.

So fuck iTunes. I don't like being forced to install software I don't want, I don't like giving up my credit card number for something I'm not buying, and I sure as fuck don't like Digital Rights Management. And fuck the iPod, because you have to transfer music to it through iTunes. If I'm gonna be carrying gigabytes of digital audio processing in my pocket, I'd like to be able to plug in a mic and record anyway.

It's great that the digital music revolution is fucking up the RIAA, believe me, I'm all for that. But Jesus H. Christ, are we gonna replace it with something worse? Not if I can help it.

Ben Folds Fucking Rules

2005-05-04T16:18:00.000-05:00

So the wife and I saw Ben Folds in Chicago last night. Great fucking show. I could just write a review, but instead I'll ramble on and on about every little detail that absolutely no one will care about, and every little detail about how the music of Ben Folds fits into my world. Consider yourself warned.

So I've been a huge Ben Folds fan for about 8 years. I've been huge for about 14 years, but that's beside the point. Anyway, I typically can't stand modern rock. Does nothing for me. Oh sure, I can get into the White Stripes occasionally, and a dude turned me onto The Mars Volta not long ago (though I can only take them in small doses, lest the music drive me into full-blown schizophrenia) but in 1997, I don't remember there being a thing worthwhile (musically speaking that is, I think we can all agree that Warcraft II ruled).

But for some reason I still watched MTV. I'd probably watch it still if I wasn't too poor for cable. Guess you could say even if I hate the music of the time, I still like to know what's going on. I like my hate to have focus.

So anyway, sometime back in 1997 I was watching MTV at 3am (not really watching, I was reading or something and it was on in the background) and they showed the video for "The Battle of Who Could Care Less". It grabbed my attention immediately. First of all, I couldn't remember the last time I'd heard a lead piano. Joe Jackson back in the 80's maybe? Secondly, the musicianship was outstanding, the piano obviously, but the drumming was complex and jazzy, not just some asshole going kick-snare-kick-snare on the beat. And the bass player was no slouch either. And on top of that, it seemed like Ben was actually saying something. Something that needed to be said.

And this is how Ben Folds kind of pisses me off. You see, I have delusions of being a musician. I've played the guitar for a few years, can sing enough to not sound like a giraffe dying, and always thought I could write a decent song if I had something worth saying. About this time I knew what song I was going to write. I was going to stick it to the so-called Generation X, which just happened to be my generation. The thing is, I fit the description they laid out pretty well, and that pissed me off to no end. I've always taken pride in my individualism, my desire to do what I like and fuck anybody who doesn't like it. Suddenly the way I dressed, felt, and acted (my philosophy if you will) became the cool thing to do. I was fucking pissed. I didn't know where all these fucking hipsters had come from all of a sudden, because they sure as hell weren't around when I was in high school. So I was going to write a song expressing those feelings. But then Ben came along and said "you see, I've got your old ID and you're all dressed up like The Cure". In that song ("Battle of Who Could Care Less") he said everything I'd been wanting to say, only better than I could've. And he's done that time and time again. How can I be a songwriter with a guy like Ben Folds in the world?

Anyway, after seeing that video I watched MTV nonstop (a truly painful exercise) until they showed the video again, which was 3am the following day. I doubt they ever showed it again. I went to Best Buy the next day and bought the CD.

Of course that CD was Whatever and Ever Amen, Ben Folds Five's major-label debut. I was worried that maybe the rest of the album was crap. I'd been duped by one good song before. But no, the whole album was awesome. I quickly bought their debut album, and you know what? It was as good or better. Ben Folds' music was the first (and and so far only) music of my generation that actually spoke to me.

So I've been a huge fan for awhile, but despite constant touring and affordable concerts I hadn't managed to see him live until last night. It's a shame the Five broke up, because I never got to see them, and while I love Ben's solo material, Darren and Robert fucking owned the drums and bass, respectively. Mrs. FatDave has recently taken up piano and become a pretty huge Folds fan herself, so tickets to this show were a pretty easy sell.

Anyway, it was a general admission show at an old theatre in Chicago, the Rivierra. Doors opened at 6pm (the show was at 7:30) and it was my plan to be there by 5 and get right up front. Of course, our fucking unreliable babysitter crapped out on us and we had to find a last-minute replacement. Our replacement worked until 4:30, had to pick up her son at day care, and long story short, we ended up in the balcony. I coulda had a good view from the floor, but the wife's on the short side and wouldn't have been able to see dick (or Ben). All good though, the Rivierra's not a huge place, and I don't think there's really a bad seat anywhere. We had a good clear view, could see the band's facial expressions and everything. The sound was decent, I would've liked the volume on the piano a little louder, but then I doubt the sound man was mixing for the balcony. Probably sounded awesome at the soundboard.

Now to keep you hanging a little longer, I gotta talk about the opening act. This was a guy I'd never heard of named Corn Mo. In Hollywood movie pitch terms, he was Weird Al meets Jack Black meets Meat Loaf meets Vince Neil. Imagine, if you will, a chubby guy with long blond hair, sequins on his cuffs, playing the accordion and occasionally whacking a cymbal lying upturned on the stage with a drumstick affixed to his right shoe, all the while singing goofy songs (that all seemed to incorporate candy, ice cream, or at least sandwiches) in a wailing heavy metal rock voice. That's Corn Mo. Here's a video, here's mp3's.

So after 30 minutes of Corn Mo, Ben came out and rocked the bitch (without actually playing "Rock this Bitch" or even "R.O.C.K with your C.O.C.K. Out", but that's OK, that dead horse is thoroughly beaten). You can see the set list here. It was awesome. The audience sang along with every song, and Ben beat the hell out of his piano. His bass player and drummer were good, but no Robert Sledge and Darren Jesse.

Highlights were pretty much where I expected, "Zak & Sara", "Army" (the audience singing the horn parts of course), "All U Can Eat", and "Philosophy" with "Miserlou" worked in. The audience played a big role in "Underground" and "Rockin' the Suburbs" where he left it up to us to both sing the Preparation H line and scream "FUCK!". On "You to Thank" he changed the line "by the time our buzz was wearing off" to "by the time the drugs were wearing off".

There were a couple guys sitting next to me who I don't think knew what they were getting into. I dunno, maybe some friend of theirs had tickets they couldn't use and they were like "yeah, I've heard of Ben Folds, and hey, free concert". But most Folds fans are so dedicated and rabid, his concerts are kinda like cult meetings. These guys looked a little frightened that everybody in the audience sang along, and I swear they jumped when everybody clapped their hands at the line "I click my heels" in "Underground". Gooble gobble, guys.

On the song "Not the Same" Ben's got this thing he does where before the song he teaches the audience to sing a couple notes in three-part harmony and then conducts those parts from the piano. After the song he conducts the audience singing them solo. Now in all the footage I've seen of this and all the bootlegs I've listened to, I've never heard this go on so long. He had us going up and down, doing it staccato, this half of the audience only, that half of the audience only. It was fucking sweet.

Now it would have been nice to come home from that and go to sleep, but no, I had work to do. So I do my little programming crap, and figure I'll see what's on the AV Club, since it publishes every tuesday night. And who was their interview with? Ben Folds, of course.

So eventually I decide to go to bed. The wife had been asleep long ago, so rather than waking her up I go to sleep on the couch in front of the TV. A little before 4am I wake up having to piss, take care of that, and go back to the couch. A rerun of Conan O'Brien from about a week ago is on. Just as I'm closing my eyes, Conan says "please welcome Ben Folds". And there's Folds, playing "Landed" with a full string section. Personally, I don't like when he fucks around with string sections, and this was worse than normal, because all they did is drown out his piano. There's some pretty intricate stuff going on harmonically in that song, and it was all lost against cellos and violas and shit. Oh well.

By that point I was experiencing Ben Folds sensory overload. I woke up this morning feeling hung over, even though I only drank one beer at the show.

Slight Evidence that the Universe May Not be Against Me

2005-04-23T09:40:00.000-05:00

A while back I wrote that the universe was against me. Now while that's putting it dramatically, I think it is safe to say that good luck doesn't visit me often. But for once, there were a couple days last week when things actually went right.

It all started with free tickets to a Cubs game.

That in itself is pretty fucking sweet. The husband of a friend of a friend of Mrs. FatDave (I'm not sure, but I think Kevin Bacon was in there somewhere too) apparently has season tickets, and for one reason or another, these people who I've never met couldn't make the 4/13/05 home game. Miraculously their tickets ended up in my possession.

So we get these tickets, they say section 19, row 2. Well, row 2 sounds great and all, but I figured section 19 was probably in the right field balcony or something. I couldn't really have free tickets for seats in the second row, could I? So I looked up the Wrigley Field seating chart, and as it happens section 19 is right behind home fucking plate.

So, we had free tickets to a cubs game, with seats in the second row behind home plate at beautiful, historic Wrigley Field. How fucking sweet is that?

So I start watching the pitching rotation closely trying to figure who'll be pitching our game. Mark Prior hadn't pitched in the majors all season because he managed to injure himself in spring training. I can't believe these fuckers keep injuring themselves in spring training. I mean, can't we get them some steroids or something? Anyway, it was looking a lot like it'd be Kerry Wood, which was awesome. Zambrano's been pitching a lot better this year (last year too), but I like Wood a lot, and he gets bonus points for looking like Ray Liotta. But about this time, they start talking about Prior coming back after fucking shit up (no really, he gave up something like 7 runs at an Iowa Cubs game) in AAA. So how cool would that be, to see Prior's first game back?

But alas, the baseball gods were not with me on that one, because his first game was scheduled the day before ours. Oh well, it was definitely gonna be Kerry Wood, and damn it, that's just as good. But then something miraculous happened. The baseball gods took pity on me, and the game Prior was to pitch got rained out. It was rescheduled for the next day, immediately following the game we had tickets to.

So, for those keeping score at home, we now had free second-row tickets to a double-header, featuring the team's two star pitchers. I ask you, how fucking incredibly sweet is that?

The whole way there I expected the car to have an engine fire, or to be arrested, or for the sitter to call and say one of the kids lost an arm. I just don't have this kind of luck. But we made it, our free tickets turned out to not be forgeries, and we got to see two games back to back. However, it did turn out that row 2 is not actually the second row, there's rows A, B and C in front of it, so it's really like the 5th row. But you know what? Big fucking deal! Did I mention we were right behind home fucking plate?

Wood had a shitty game. He gave a homer to the first batter he faced, hit the second, walked the bases loaded, and San Diego had 5 runs by the second inning. Final score, 3-8.

Game two was much better. Prior shut 'em out for 6 innings (and still is sitting on a 0.00 ERA after 2 games pitched) and got on base twice in three at-bats. Derek Lee remembered how to hit, and the Cubs had 7 runs by the end of the second inning. The final score was exactly the opposite of the first game, 8-3.

So, for once in my life, I had a pretty amazing streak of good luck. Felt good. I imagine the original owner of those tickets is kicking himself for giving them up, but I don't know him, so fuck him.

Neil Young is Fucking Hard

2005-04-02T08:16:00.000-06:00

According to this CNN.com article, Neil Young rocked so hard at a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony that he gave himself a brain aneurysm. After it was diagnosed, he and his aneurysm went to Nashville and recorded some music. Then he got it treated.

Now whether you love or hate Neil Young (I'm in the first category, thank you), you've got to respect a motherfucker who won't let a little thing like a brain aneurysm get in the way of recording.

OLGA

2005-04-02T03:28:00.000-06:00

OK, I think I just found my favorite file on OLGA, the On-Line Guitar Archive (or as us old-timers like to remember it, ftp.uwp.edu).

Fucking Blasphemy

2005-03-31T10:54:00.000-06:00

A few nights back I watching a rerun of Conan O'Brien. One of his guests was Hilary Duff. Apparently on her new CD she does a cover of The Who classic "My Generation". Now while just the mere thought of Hilary Duff singing The Who is bad enough, Conan mentioned that she changed the line "hope I die before I get old" to "hope I don't die before I get old".

What the fuck kind of bullshit is this?

Now, I'm not about to enumerate every reason why Hilary Duff should be painfully killed (the list would surely push me over my monthly bandwidth limits), but this has got to be pretty fucking near the top. I'm sorry, but you simply can't do that. Many would say that rock and roll is all about being a pissed-off, angst-ridden, rebellious teenager, and "My Generation" is probably the single purest example of that concept. You can not take it and sanitize it like that. That's a fucking crime against music.

Conan gave her some shit about it, but he kept it light. That's why he's a talk show host and I'm not. I may have snapped, yelled "Well too fucking bad!" and bludgeoned her to death with a microphone.

I'll Take "Things That Make You Feel Old" for $500, Alex

2005-03-31T09:03:00.000-06:00

It occurred to me the other day that I've now spent more of my life not a virgin than I spent a virgin. The line was actually crossed roughly 10 months ago (funny that I don't remember the exact date) but I didn't realize it until a couple days ago. I'm not sure if—or how—I should celebrate.

God's Underwear

2005-03-26T03:45:00.000-06:00

Hypertext is dangerous stuff.

In a prehistoric article from 1989 titled Hypertext: Beyond the Hype, the author says the following:

Another criticism of hypertext is that users are presented with so much information that their human circuits burst with cognitive overload. While reading through a document, choices must constantly be made about which links to follow and which to ignore. [...] Although this problem is not new with hypertext, computerized access does add a sometimes overwhelming dimension to it.

The same article mentions that prototype hypertext applications are in development at several educational institutions, but they are not yet commercially available. At this point in my little story (which is growing longer and more bloated by the keystroke) I'd like to ask all of my readers (ie. both of you) to grovel at the feet of Tim Berners-Lee, not just for creating the HTTP protocol, but for giving it to the world free of charge. Other people, I dunno, Bill Gates for instance, might have tried to profit from their invention and we wouldn't have the internet we do today.

So what was I saying? Oh yes, hypertext is dangerous stuff.

Sometimes I'm amazed at the journeys the web takes me on. And on some nights I do find my human circuits bursting with cognitive overload. Tonight was one of those nights.

It started innocently enough. I was kinda bored with the web. I'd read all my usual sites (over there on the right, below the archive) and didn't know where to go. Then I remembered I hadn't read Robot Johnny in awhile. So I went there, and he just mentioned kind of offhand that he had a new favorite Wikipedia entry. It was the entry for undergarment.

Now as I've said twice already, hypertext is dangerous stuff, and possibly it's most concentrated form is Wikipedia. If plain hypertext has a danger level analogous to, say, drinking beer, then Wikipedia is like smoking a mixture of hashish and crack while mainlining heroin and getting a blowjob. I've learned that if I want to be productive, it's best not to follow a link to Wikipedia, because once there I'm pretty much done for the day.

So I read all about underwear. I learned its varieties, nicknames, and history through the ages. But most interesting to me was the link regarding the Mormon temple garment variety. This just in: Them Mormons is some goofy fuckers.

Unfortunately for me, that article referred to the Judeo-Christian God by name, and before I knew it I was not just knee-deep in the etymology of the tetragrammaton (and learning fancy big words to boot). Of course as close as anybody can figure, His name is Yahweh (pronounced ee-ah-oo-ay), but the real pronunciation may have been lost due to strict adherance to the "name in vain" commandment and the general lax rules regarding vowels in early Hebrew.

This led me to my theory (which is mine) that the original, lost pronunciation of the name of God is "Oy Vey".

It was just one innocent link. Now it's 3 hours later, my eyes are bloodshot, my head aches, and I know way too much about underwear and ancient Hebrew texts. Is there such thing as hypertext detox?

The Most Obvious Joke Possible

2005-03-17T10:48:00.000-06:00

Is Robert Blake now going to team up with O.J. Simpson to find the real killers?

Tales of Misspent Youth (Part I)

2005-03-15T20:18:00.000-06:00

In the early spring of 1987, two candidates were battling to be the next mayor of Des Moines Iowa. These men were George Flagg and John "Pat" Dorrian, and it was a special election to replace the recently-deceased Mayor Pete Crivaro. Dorrian was way ahead in the polls, but all over town were enormous yellow signs that read "FLAGG MAYOR" in big black letters. Nothing else, just a yellow background with a gigantic "FLAGG" in a sans-serif font and a smaller "MAYOR" centered below it.

Now I try to keep this non-blog non-political, so I'm not going to mention which political party Mr. Flagg belonged too. Besides, for the events I'm about to describe, our motivation was not particularly political. It was far more humor motiviated. But Flagg was an asshole, and that certainly didn't hurt.

I think I was the ringleader on this caper, but it's been 18 years and my memory is foggy. Other participants may believe it was all their idea. If so, they can get their own blog and write up their version of the events.

I'm going to use first names only to protect the guilty. There was me (that is Dave), Bill, Harry, Rob, and Joel. I think Kathy may have been there too, but that seems like a lot for one car. We were all around 17 years old, it was spring break and, as I've said before, there was never anything to do in Des Moines. We decided that those yellow and black signs were just begging for some creative modifications.

The first stop was a hardware store (may have been Menard's) where we picked up 6 or 7 cans of spray paint. Apparently it was nothing unusual for 5 teenagers to be buying spray paint in quantity, late at night. Other adventures had us buying 10 dozen eggs or carts full of toilet paper. Never seemed to be a problem.

Again, some details are fuzzy, but I think Rob was behind the wheel of his bitchin' Camaro on this night. Bill had somehow aquired (stole it from the dealership) a magnetic dealer plate, which was probably stuck over Rob's real license plate. I know we used it a few times, this was probably one of them, but I can't say for certain.

It wasn't long until we found our first FLAGG MAYOR sign. They were fucking everywhere. We crept up to it, armed with our paint cans, and sprayed over the L and the first G, leaving a sign that quite clearly said "F A G MAYOR". It was a thing of beauty. The spacing of the letters worked out very nicely and the paint color was a near-perfect match.

Five people turned out to be the perfect number. The signs were double-sided, so four people could spray (two per side, one on L, one on G) while the fifth played lookout. Somebody was spraying somewhat haphazardly, which prompted Harry to say "no, no, nice...even...strokes." He demonstrated, slowly down one side of the letter, back to the top, and down again until it was very professionally covered.

I'm not sure how many signs we hit before we were done. The newspaper article said "at least 12" but I think we got far more than that. We covered every corner of town. The sun was coming up when we got back to Bill's house, which was nearly always home base because his single mom worked the graveyard shift.

Now, if this were the end of the story, I probably wouldn't have written about it. Just some teenage vandals out having fun one night. But one of the candidates (can you guess which one?) took it to a whole new level.

We hadn't been back home but a few minutes when Bill got a call from another friend telling him to turn on the channel 8 news. There was mayoral candidate George Flagg looking pissed. He wasn't blaming teenage hoodlums like a rational man would. He was blaming his opponent, John "Pat" Dorrian, and demanding that he fix his signs. Apparently he thought that Dorrian's master campaign strategy was to deface his signs. While I can't remember Dorrian's exact response, I believe the gist of it was "whatever."

The Des Moines Register ran an article the next day, complete with a very large and very nice photograph of one of our altered (I like to think of them as improved) signs. We made the front page. A witness the reporter interviewed said it was "very neatly done". Harry was especially proud of this.

Anyway, we thought Flagg was being a real dumbshit, so we drafted a letter to the Register claiming responsibility. The phrase "no political motivation" was used, which was mostly true. Bill came up with a brilliant paragraph that included something along the lines of "while we realize that what we did was immature, that's no excuse for the candidates to act like children". We typed it up in AppleWorks on Bill's bad-ass Apple //e, signed it with our initials and sent it off. They didn't print the letter, but Flagg shut the fuck up about his precious signs the next day, so I have a feeling they forwarded it to his people.

Dorrian went on to win the election and served two additional terms. He retired from office and now has a trail named after him that runs along the river through the heart of downtown Des Moines.

Eighteen years later I still look back fondly on this night, even though I've lost touch with most of the people involved. The one exception is Bill, who I still email regularly though I haven't seen him in person for years. He helped me to recall a lot of the details of this story.

As an intersting side note, a few years later we learned that Rob, our faithful driver and co-painter that night, was gay. That made sense, given that every girl we knew wanted to totally fuck him silly. At any rate, he thought making the signs say "fag" was just as funny as any of us did.

The Peanut Butter/Love Equation

2005-03-12T09:23:00.000-06:00

So I just saw this commercial for Jif brand peanut butter. It was the one where the dad makes his little daughter a peanut butter sandwich, and explains why he folds it in half. You know the one. I've seen this 30-second piece of shmaltz at least 100 times, but today was the first time that I was able to pick up on the subtext.

At the end of the commercial they say (and I'm paraphrasing here), "Buying Jif is an easy way to show your loved ones how much you care." This got me wondering.

You see, my wife has certain responsibilities in our house, not the least of which is buying peanut butter. Of course, had I realized that so much rode on the Peanut Butter decision, I may have opted to handle that duty myself. Anyway, I decided to investigate the pantry.

Imagine my utter shock when I saw, not a jar of Jif, but a giant Sam's Club sized can of Peter Pan peanut butter. Even after I regained my composure, I still could not escape the undeniable truth of what my wife's choice of peanut butter said about her: She loves neither me nor our children.

If anyone can recommend a good divorce lawyer in the Chicago area, I would appreciate it.

Nothing But the Dead and Dying Back in My Little Town

2005-03-11T11:42:00.000-06:00

Though I've lived on the outskirts of Chicago for going on five years now, I spent the first 30 or so years of my life in Des Moines, Iowa. Most people don't know much about Des Moines (pronounced "duh-MOYN"), so I'm going to tell you about it as it may feature prominently in future stories of my misspent youth.

Des Moines is the capital city of Iowa, with population just under 200,000, 500,000 counting the suburbs. Not huge, but not exactly tiny either. They are the largest city in Iowa, an urban area sprouting in the middle of endless corn fields. Their contributions to society include Slipknot, Cloris Leachman, and that's about it. The best burger in Des Moines is from B-Bops, the best taco is from Tasty Tacos. And aside from having family and friends there, in my opinion B-Bops and Tasty Tacos are the only things Des Moines has going for it.

I left Des Moines for a reason, or technically for many reasons. It's actually an old tradition for Iowa to hemorrhage young people. Even my 75 year-old retired mother wants out. People only stay because they're stuck there. Everybody I know who has had the opportunity to get out has taken it. My wife and I refer to Des Moines as "the joy vortex", because once you enter its borders, the overwhelming despair of the residents settles on you like thick smog, suffocating you and draining every ounce of joy from your being.

I think the biggest problem is simply that the town is dead. Dead Moines they call it. Seriously, there is not a god-damned thing to do if you're too young to drink, and if you're old enough to drink, well, you can drink. There are movie theaters I guess, but there was even a few years in the 90's when there weren't any of those. 90% of the theaters in the town were owned by one company, they didn't make enough money and got the fuck out of Dodge. It took some time for anybody else to come in. Can you imagine? This is a town that wasn't even able to keep an arena football franchise. How shitty do you have to be to not even have an arena football team?

So, for entertainment in Des Moines, what you do is if you're old enough you drink in bars. If you're not old enough, you drink and drive around in circles downtown. Since the downtown area virtually shuts completely down at 5pm, it's not too big a deal to have drunken teenagers circling every weekend. And while doing either of these activities, there's a higher-than-average likelihood that someone will try to start a fist fight with you for no real reason.

And in addition to the deadness, the town is completely fucking uptight. More than one friend has compared it to the town in Footloose. Here's a city where when rave parties were all the rage, they passed an ordinance banning all-night dancing. When the local heavy metal station wanted to put on a concert in the park, the city refused them a license to sell beer, saying something along the lines of "if these here kids wanna have fun, why do they gotta be so noisy about it?" And don't even get me started on the cops, who are absolute fucking cocksuckers. Christ, I've got six or seven stories on those bastards alone. It wasn't until I left that I realized that not all cops are assholes. Imagine my surprise.

To make matters worse, in the 90's crystal meth took the city by storm. No tank of anhydrous amonia was safe. As far as I know, nothing has changed in that regard. Nothing makes a dead, uptight town more livable than a bunch of pissed-off trailer-trash tweeker scumbags everywhere you go. I once worked in a restaurant where I was the only person on the kitchen staff who didn't crank it up nightly. It worked well for me though, because in an effort to keep themselves occupied, they'd clean the whole kitchen and I wouldn't have to.

I wouldn't be surprised at all to get a bunch of angry email from residents of Des Moines about this post. That's because many of them live in a profound state of denial. It's not uncommon for people to say how friendly people are in Des Moines. Well, that's bullshit, and I imagine that the people who say that have, like many of the people there, never been anywhere else. I've had more strangers on the street start conversations with me in Chicago than ever did in Des Moines. The way I remember it, in Des Moines the rule is "avoid eye contact lest ye be snarled at". I've never seen some random asshole try to start a fight since I left. There it was a regular occurrence. Guess meth makes you violent or something. The other one I heard all my life was "Des Moines has the best schools in the nation!" Well, having been through the schools there, I can tell you that that's bullshit too. Every fucking town in every fucking state says they have the best schools in the nation. I hear it here all the time too, only I'm more inclined to believe it.

But you know, shitty a place as it is, it is where I grew up and I do still have friends and family there, and I've probably made it seem worse than it really is. Despite the lack of anything going on there, my friends and I were able to make our own fun, though we weren't ever able to do so within the rule of law.

The title of this post comes from the Simon and Garfunkel song "My Little Town", which my wife is sure was written about Des Moines. It also says:

And after it rains there's a rainbow
And all of the colors are black
It's not that the colors aren't there
It's just imagination they lack

While I know Paul Simon isn't a native of Des Moines, when I hear those lyrics I think he must have at least visited it.

You've Got To Be Fucking Kidding Me

2005-03-09T08:25:00.000-06:00

No, seriously, you've got to be fucking kidding me.

More Evidence that the Universe is Against Me

2005-03-09T08:09:00.000-06:00

Steak and BJ Day falls on my wife's birthday. How am I supposed to get my steak and BJ on her birthday?

(Under normal circumstances, I'd credit Sir Duke for turning me on to the new holiday, but it really just ended up being depressing. Therefore he gets no credit whatsoever.)

Da Pope

2005-02-28T13:36:00.000-06:00

OK, so it seems like Pope John Paul II has spent the last few months knocking loudly at Death's door. Now while I wish no ill will on anyone (with the exception of Paris Hilton, who should be fed to starving dogs) I do think it's time for a new pope. I don't care because I'm Catholic, I'm about as fucking far from Catholic as you can get, but I care because the Catholic Church is probably the single most powerful organization in operation today. Maybe we can get somebody in there who will drag the church out of the 12th century and into at least the 18th or 19th.

You know, somebody who will say, "Hey, you know what? Maybe if priests could marry they wouldn't be molesting altar boys all the time." Or maybe a pope who would say "Contaception, contrashmeption, you kids have your fun," though that would apparently be a Jewish pope, and I don't really see that happening.

Of course nothing will ever change. Priests will never be allowed to marry and every sperm will always be sacred. What good is a religion that doesn't meddle in the sex lives of all involved?

So you know what we should have? A Sicilian pope. A Sicilian pope with connections. Pope Don Paul Gambino. Hell, the power structure of the church is already similar to the power structure of the mob. What is the pope if not the boss of all bosses? The congregations pay tribute to the priests, who pay tribute to the bishops, all the way up to the Vatican. And if the next priest who probed an altar boy turned up in the rectory with two bullets in the back of his head, maybe it would send a clear message to any other priests who were fighting that particular temptation. Bullets in the brain are messy, but you can't strangle a priest with piano wire. The collar gets in the way.

Of course if the next pope is named Pope George Ringo, far as I'm concerned he can do whatever he wants, because that would just be cool.

Butt. Crack. Lint.

2005-02-22T10:11:00.000-06:00

A friend and colleague of mine has a new blog. Sadly, he's claiming that I somehow played a part in inspiring him to start this blogging nonsense. Exactly how I could inspire anyone to do anything other than leave my site is beyond me. Anyway, check out his stuff, for which he has an awesome domain name: www.buttcracklint.com.

I Totally Have ADD

2005-02-16T04:51:00.000-06:00

So, I was sleeping on the couch this afternoon, as I'm prone to do after working all hours of the night. The Jane Pauley Show was on the TV, and I groggily awoke to them discussing Adult ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder).

Now, I always figured ADD was one of those bullshit new conditions they make up so people don't have to take responsibility for their actions or inactions as the case may be. But the things they were describing sounded very familiar: A lack of interest in things not mentally challenging, the tendency to not finish what you start, a general disorganized life, etc.

So I said to myself, "Self, you oughtta look this shit up." I then went back to sleep until three toddlers started simultaneously jumping on me.

So later and more or less fully awake, I looked up this checklist. I started to answer the questions but lost interest about halfway through.

OK, that was a bad joke. With much effort and concentration, I was able to eventually finish it.

Anyway, supposedly if you answer more than 20 of the 77 questions with "frequently" or "very frequently", chances are good you have ADD. I answered "very frequently" to 26 of them, and "frequently" to 9 more. I'd say my ADD potential is high.

What's more, there were three key questions which were supposed to be more heavily weighted. They were:

History of ADD symptoms in childhood, such as distractibility, short attention span, impulsivity or restlessness.

Shit, all through school my mind used to wander. Teachers would have to call my name 3 times to snap me back to reality. So I guess that's "very frequently".

Short attention span, unless very interested in something

Well, yeah, but I tend to only do things that interest me, so it's not that big an issue. I called it "frequently".

Easily distracted, tendency to drift away (although at times can be hyperfocused)

Oh hell yeah. If I had a nickel for every time the wife said "are you even paying attention to me?" I'd have $97.45. And I get amazingly hyperfocused sometimes when I'm writing code, playing music or playing video games.

Other questions I scored "very frequently" were about being unable to go to sleep due to too many thoughts, unable to wake up, fidgeting, not living up to potential in school, easily bored, bad financial management, impulsive job changes (I once quit a job because my future wife brought home a kitten and I didn't want her to get more kitten time than me, but it was a shitty job anyway), trouble with authority, immaturity, and low self-esteem. And that's really just the tip of the iceberg.

So hey, I've probably got ADD! How cool is that?

But truth-be-told I still think it's a bullshit condition, really. Seems to me it's an affliction of smart people who refuse to waste time on the mundane, even if the mundane is what earns you money. When you take a person who likes to be intellectually challenged, mix with stubbornness and good old-fashioned irresponsibility, what have you got? ADD!

But I'm still going to get diagnosed, because what better excuse for shirking my responsibilities. "Yeah, I know I haven't worked on that website in days, but it's not my fault! I have ADD!" "Yes honey, I was going to change that diaper, but I saw something shiny and got distracted. I do have ADD after all..." "Yes, I know I'm late turning in my invoices. Need I remind you that I have fucking ADD??!!"

I can hear them getting sick of me already.

Nude Celebrities

2005-02-10T15:14:00.000-06:00

I heard on the news today that Christie's in London just sold an oil painting of Kate Moss nude and pregnant for an ungodly sum of money. Thing is, I don't really give a fuck, I've never seen what the big deal is about her. Is it just me or is she really kind of not pretty? I mean I see prettier women every day just walking down the street. I really don't get it. Maybe I'm out of touch with the average American male or something. Maybe they like their women bony and malnourished with no hips, small boobs and sunken facial features. Not me though. Call me crazy, but I like women to look, you know, like women.

So if I don't give a fuck about Kate Moss, why am I writing this? Just to get cheap hits from people searching for "Nude Celebrities"? Well, OK, that's part of it, but the main reason is the news coverage. They only showed a close-up of the face part of the painting and went on to say "we can't show you the whole painting...because she's naked!!" Well, I added the pause and excitement, but you get my point.

Oh yeah, that reminds me: The point.

How fucking uptight are we that we can't see a nude oil painting on TV? It's fucking art. It's not like the thing was photorealistic or anything, and it's not like it was in any way erotic. It's a bony naked pregnant chick, fuzzily rendered in oil on canvas. God forbid America should be exposed to such debauchery. You know, I expected the new millenium to be cool. I'd given up on it being all flying cars and rayguns by the mid 90's, but I never expected all this "new morality" bullshit.

Interestingly, the painting was painted by the great grandson of Sigmund Freud. I think he set out to paint a portrait of his mother but ended up with Kate Moss naked and pregnant.

In other nude celebrity news, apparently Debbie, excuse me, Deborah Gibson is posing in Playboy. Remember her? She had some MTV hits as a 17-year-old pop princess back in the thoroughly horrendous 80's. She was the thinking-man's Tiffany. Years later she changed her name to Deborah for an unsuccessful comeback.

Now she's 34 and you can see her naked in Playboy. Well you know, she was pretty cute back in the day, but I'd say she's about 14 years too late to be posing nude. I hate to be blunt, but nobody reads playboy to see naked 34-year-olds. Also, the last thing a guy wants to be reminded of while he's spanking it is time's ability to steal youth and innocence. Those pictures would say to me, "Remember when you thought Debbie Gibson was hot? That was 17 years ago you ancient fuck!"

Had she been in Playboy at 18 or 20, shit yeah, I'd be all over it. But you know, I'm 34 for fuck's sake. My wife's 27 and I can see her naked whenever I want.

But the pathetic part is, it's all just a desperate attempt at another comeback. It's timed to release with her new single which is called (wait for it...) Naked. What we have here is a former teen pop superstar (well, maybe not superstar...) grasping for relevance as an adult. And you know what? It ain't gonna happen. Oh sure, people will look at the pictures, but it will be more out of curiosity than anything. "Oh look, there's Debbie Gibson's ass. Wow, she got old. "

Now, don't get me wrong. I have absolutely nothing against 34 year old women, and I do not think that 34 years old is ancient. But you see, there's fantasy and reality. In reality, I don't want an 18 year old woman. They're royal pains in the ass and listen to shitty music. But they're nice to look at as long as you don't have to, you know, talk to them or spend any time with them. When it comes to fantasy, which obviously is the domain of Playboy, you want young and mindless. And sorry Debbie, but that ain't you anymore.

Now can we please get Britney Spears in there while she's still young and hot?

New Design

2005-01-30T08:05:00.000-06:00

I was never really happy using a ready-made Blogger template, given that I supposedly make websites for a living and all. Anyway, I decided to do something about it and came up with a new design. This will prompt at least one friend to say "oh, you've got time to work on your website but when the fuck are you gonna make the one you promised me?" What can I say, I'm a cock,

So anyway, now I have a design that's completely my own. I'm not sure if it's any better than the one I was using (probably not) but at least it's unique. I think maybe it's a little too blue and I worry about the readability somewhat.

Let me know what you think (like anybody reads this shit) and I'll change the color scheme if you think it sucks.

Baby, If You've Ever Wondered...

2005-01-29T01:29:00.000-06:00

Some people wish for world peace. Some wish for unimaginable wealth. Still others wish for group sex with Tina Fey and Thora Birch. My dreams are much simpler. I wish for a box set of all episodes of WKRP in Cincinnati on DVD.

Unfortunately, due to the licensing costs of all the music the show contained, that celebrity three-way seems more likely. There are a few episodes available in shitty VHS versions, but they've replaced most of the original music with generic crap. Of course, actors were often talking over the music, so they've redubbed those lines with impersonators. And in cases where the dialogue referred to the music that was playing, they've changed the lines. That's a god-damned travesty.

But there may be a glimmer of hope. Supposedly, Shout Factory is considering spending the money to license the music and release good DVD versions of the show. They've done it before with SCTV and Freaks and Geeks. You can email them encouragement at info@shoutfactory.com. I already have, of course. You can also put in your two cents at http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/.

On the down side, the music licensing will drive the DVD prices way up, but I think it would be worth it. If nothing else, the original versions as aired in the 70's need to be preserved before one of the funniest television shows of all time is lost forever.

Who Are These Idiots and Who Gave Them Internet Access?

2005-01-27T01:47:00.000-06:00

Patrick Gaskill was certainly struck by Inspirado when he created his Suggested Google Alphabet page. Here you can see an up-to-the-second list of the most popular search terms per letter of the alphabet entered into Google.

Unfortunately, it only confirms that the internet has been taken over by morons.

Because Patrick's page updates with every hit, what you see by following the link above may be different from what I list here, but that's not enough to stop me from making fun of the most popular searches as listed on 1/26/2005.

A is for amazon
B is for best buy
C is for cnn
D is for dictionary
E is for ebay

OK, right off the bat we've got 5 instances of people searching for the actual domain name of the site they're looking for. The URL for Amazon is www.amazon.com you dumbass. As my good friend Larry would say, "What's the number for 911?". Granted, dictionary.com isn't the only dictionary on the web, but it's certainly the easiest to remember, and it also happens to be the top-ranked result Google gives (as of now anyway).

F is for Firefox

OK, wait. Maybe the internet hasn't been taken over by morons after all. It really does give me a warm fuzzy feeling to know that so many people are looking for my favorite web browser. If you don't know what I'm talking about, run—don't walk—to the Firefox website, download it, install it and never use Internet Explorer again. You need reasons other than some asshole's recommendation? OK, you see, IE is a piece of shit. Do you have any idea how ridiculous it is to get a virus or pick up spyware from going to a web site? That that can happen boggles the fucking mind. It's almost as if IE was specifically written to allow it. Firefox won't fuck with you that way. It won't even allow popups if you don't let it. And if that's not enough, tabbed browsing rules. And did I mention the shitloads of extensions and themes for customization? Oh yeah, it's also completely free.

Another reason the F entry gives me a little hope is that until recently, the URL for Firefox was not www.firefox.com. It actually was worthy of a search! On the downside, they may be searching for that shitty Clint Eastwood movie.

G is for games

Yeah, I suppose. Have fun sifting through the 360,000,000 results!

H is for hotmail
I is for ikea

I don't know whether to ridicule people who search for these or pity them. Oh wait, of course I do.

J is for jokes

Welcome to the information super-highway, a tool that rivals the printing press for revolutionizing communication. Let's look up some jokes to tell at the office.

K is for kazaa

While the address for this is in fact www.kazaa.com, I'm hoping they're actually looking for an early version that doesn't fill your PC with spyware. Or maybe they're confusing Kazaa and Limewire. Or maybe they're actually searching for that shitty Shaquille O'Neal movie.

L is for lyrics

Is it just me or are lyrics sites fucking horrendous with these days? Thank gods that the fucking Harry Fox Agency sued lyrics.ch into submission years ago. Now instead of one good site we have a thousand little shitty ones all pushing spyware and popups. They also completely fucked up OLGA. I hope those fucking cocks at HFA choke on their mothers' shit.

M is for mapquest

You're searching for Mapquest when the address is mapquest.com? You know what? You're too stupid to drive.

N is for news

Since there's maybe 2 or 3 news sites (tops) out there, you'll surely find exactly what you're looking for by punching "news" into Google.

O is for online dictionary

As opposed to all the print dictionaries that turn up on the web.

P is for paris hilton

Oh, give me a fucking break. If you give two fucks about this spoiled little rich cunt, please get the fuck off the internet and back in your trailer you pathetic waste of skin. If you're looking for her porn video, that's even worse. This woman (and I use the term loosely) is the very definition of skank. Her snatch is likely a rancid cesspool of hitherto unknown variations of herpes and at least one heroin-resistant strain of chlamydia.

Also, you can't tell me the number one search for 'P' isn't 'Porn'. I think this was some judicious editing by the folks at Google.

Q is for quotes

Because nothing else starts with Q.

R is for recipes

Yeah, fine. Too bad you can't even make toast.

S is for spybot

If everyone were to heed the collective advice of the geek community and forsake Internet Explorer for Firefox, nobody would need Spybot. You do need to pretty much use Google every time you want to find it though, because the URL (http://www.safer-networking.org/en/) is impossible to remember and spybot.com, .org and .net are all owned by assholes filching on Spybot's good name. So this entry is pretty awesome. People are using Spybot, which is good, and using Google for something that actually needs searched for. As Chief Gunnery Sgt. Hartman would say, out-fucking-standing!

T is for tara reid

Looking for the titty pictures I'm sure.

But T should really stand for Thunderbird to go along with F for Firefox. The only internet application more likely than Microsoft Internet Explorer to give you a virus is Microsoft Outlook (noticing a pattern here?). If you run Outlook, dump it immediately and install Thunderbird. It's better anyway, it's free, and it has built in spam controls. And extensions and themes, of course.

U is for ups

I'll say it very slowly: double-you... double-you... double-you... you... pee... ess... dot... com... you... dumb... fucking... turd.

V is for verizon

Well, thanks to shitty web design, Verizon has made the list for V. Thing is, 9 out of 10 people are looking for www.verizonwireless.com, but verizon.com brings up local service, DSL, and other crap that maybe some people on the east coast actually give a rat's fuck about. There's a link for wireless buried deep on that page, which takes you to another page with more crap, which then, finally, has a link to www.verizonwireless.com. Here's a hint to the dumbasses who designed the Verizon site: Go to Google and enter "usability".

W is for weather

I'm sure that entering "weather" into the strongest search engine on what is a vast global network of computers delivering information in all languages to all corners of the earth gave you exactly what you were looking for—the weather for Toledo Ohio on the morning of 01/26/2005.

And um, incidentally, there's www.weather.com.

X is for xbox

Damn, I was rooting for Xenology Today.

Y is for yahoo

Dude, seriously. You're not really that dumb, are you?

Z is for zip codes

Yeah, I can live with that.

Now that this horse is obviously dead, it's time to beat it.

Of the most popular search terms for the 26 letters of the English alphabet:

10 letters (A, B, C, E, H, I, K, M, U & Y) were searches for the main part of the actual domain name of the site that was obviously being searched for. That's roughly 38.5%. The mind boggles.
4 letters (D, V, W & X) were searches that would have taken you to a site that probably would have given you what you wanted had you surrounded it with "www." and ".com" in the address bar.
6 letters' searches (G, J, L, N, Q & W) were very vague. Narrow it down people. Try "toledo weather" or "lawyer jokes" or "general tso chicken recipe".
1 letter (O) was redundant with another letter (D).
2 letters (P & T) were for stupid shit that nobody should care about.
5 letters (F, S, V, X & Z) were actually for useful searches.

Yes, I know those numbers add up to 28. A couple letters (W & X) made it into two categories.

Now I must ask, are people really so dumb they punch "amazon" into Google rather than typing www.amazon.com into the address bar? I think that's probably the case, but there are some other possibilities I've come up with, listed below.

#1: Google steals focus

If google.com is your start page (it should probably be everybody's) if you open your browser and begin typing in the address bar, you'll likely get part of what you were typing in the address bar and part in the Google search box, especially if you are on dialup. This is because once the Google main page has loaded, the cursor is automagically positioned in the search box, regardless of whether or not you're typing. Pressing enter then submits to Google.

While this can be a problem, I think the likelihood of it accounting for painfully obvious searches is small. It could up the instance of searches for "mazon.com" or "w.yahoo.com", but not "amazon" or "yahoo" by themselves.

#2: Major web sites hacking Google

The idea here is that Amazon, Yahoo, Mapquest and Paris Hilton could be running programs that automatically submit thousands of searches to Google in an attempt to up their ranking. I don't think this actually affects the rankings (I could be wrong, I'm not fully-versed in Google's ranking criteria). Rankings are adjusted by the number of times a particular result link is followed, but just bulk searching may not have an effect. Even if it does, I'm sure the folks at Google are smart enough to discount consecutive hits from the same IP block when calculating the rankings.

This explanation also completely fails Hanlon's Razor.

#3: People don't know what the address bar is or what it's for

It sounds crazy, but there's people out there who have their start page set to some search engine or another (hopefully it's Google) and don't know how to enter an address. I overheard a conversation between my wife and a another person once where my wife was saying "open Internet Explorer (this was in the pre-Firefox days) and enter 'www.weather.com'...OK, now see the zip code box...?" They didn't see the zip code box. Eventually we asked what they did see, and it was something along the lines of "Yahoo search results". They were searching Yahoo for www.weather.com, unaware that a URL goes up in the address bar.

I consider this separate from the "fucking morons" theory because I realize that there are plenty of otherwise smart people out there who are clueless about computers, just as I am clueless about calculus and playing the harp. I've actually even seen computers come with the browser installed so that the address bar is hidden in a cheap attempt to force users to use some shitty search engine.

#4: The internet has been taken over by morons

OK, I think you know where I stand on that one.

As an interesting side note, I'm going to mention that almost a month has past between my first seeing the Suggested Google Alphabet page and writing this. In that time I don't think any of the search words have changed. Interestingly, since that page links live to searches for the most popular terms, it will have an effect on the most popular terms and help to keep them popular. Ironic, no?

So there you have it. When I decided to write this, I had no idea it was going to inspire such virulent rage on my part. All I can say in my defense is that the site's called Bile Duct for a reason and that I fucking hate Paris Hilton. And the Harry Fucking Fox Agency.

On the upside, if all these words are such popular search terms, I should get a lot of inadvertent hits. Yay!

Holy Shit, it's Rage Kage!

2005-01-16T13:34:00.000-06:00

So I finally got around to seeing Jacob's Ladder a few nights back. I saw the tail end of it in the early 90's on HBO and thought it looked pretty freakin' cool but it was never on again. I've wanted to see it for a few years now, but it's kind of hard to find. None of my local video stores had it despite there being a new special edition DVD, and I didn't really want to buy it without seeing it first.

Anyway, in order to help my friend Larry get a free iPod, I signed up for a trial of Blockbuster Online, and it was the first movie I picked.

Great movie if you like psychological horror what-the-fuck-is-real movies. Highly recommended.

Watching the credits (which I do because I'm a film snob), I recognized a familiar name. A couple actually, but the big one for me was Kyle Gass. If that name means nothing to you, you may as well stop reading now. You won't give a fuck. But the enlightened among you will recognize that as the full name of KG, 50% of Tenacious D. He was listed as Tony. Thing is I didn't remember a Tony in the movie.

Anyway, I scanned through the movie again looking for Kage. There's a scene where Jacob Singer (played by Tim Robbins) has a fever of 106 degrees. His girlfriend rounds up all the neighbors to help her throw him in a bathtub filled with ice. One of those neighbors, apparently named Tony, is KG. He had no lines and is onscreen for maybe 5 seconds total. It's strange that he was credited, considering that Macaulay Culkin had a bigger part, multiple scenes with actual lines and shit, and was never credited.

After the whole ice-bath scene plays out, Jacob awakes to a doctor looking down on him. His doctor is Lewis Black, then unknown but now semi-famous for his stand-up and his appearances on The Daily Show. He actually had a line: "You're a lucky guy Jake. You must have friends in high places." This line is ironic, but you'd have to see the movie to understand.

Also in the movie are a pre-Pulp Fiction Ving Rhames, a pre-Seinfeld Jason Alexander and a pre-ER Eriq Lasalle. But who gives a shit about them, that was totally fucking KG helping with the ice!!!

Anyway, now if I ever have the good fortune to meet the underrated half of the D, I know exactly what I'll say: "I loved you in Jacob's Ladder!"

KG and another guy

KG, Tim Robbins and that other guy

KG looks worried

Lewis Black

Some credits

This is Your Child on Drugs.

2005-01-11T11:23:00.000-06:00

So I was watching TV the other day and saw a new Partnership for a Drug-Free America commercial. Actually I don't think they're called that anymore. They have some new 21st century name or something. Anyway, you know who I'm talking about. The commercial featured an average looking teenage boy doing a talking-head monologue that went something like this:

Hey teenager, are your parents watching this with you? Good. Have they talked to you about the drug ecstasy yet? No? They still think partying is about drinking beer, huh? They don't know good kids just like you take ecstasy. They've never asked about the vitamins in your room or the glow-stick jewelry. Ecstasy can kill you and drugs are bad.

OK, I don't think he actually said "drugs are bad", but I forget how he wraps up.

Anyway, I just want to say thank God for this commercial! It's high time parents were made aware of the drug ecstasy (not to be confused with the emotion ecstasy) and its inextricable link to glow-stick jewelry. Where there is glow-stick jewelry there is, without a doubt, ecstasy. Probably ketamine too.

But unfortunately, this commercial doesn't go nearly far enough toward educating parents. Every drug out there has definitive warning signs, so as a public service I'm going to list them below.

By far, the biggest indicator of drug use in general is moodiness and rebelliousness in teenagers. Non drug using teenagers are perfectly happy, self-actualized individuals that have super relationships with their parents and their entire families. If your teenager shies away from family activities and seems to want to spend a lot of time out of the house or alone, seek counseling immediately.

If your teenager exhibits moodiness and rebellion, the music he or she listens to and the way they dress can help you determine exactly what drug they are addicted to. Generally speaking, if your child listens to the same music you listened to when you were young, it's a safe bet they take the same drugs you did. Classic rock means marijuana and 80's pop is a sure sign of cocaine.

Here are some specific warning signs that your child is in trouble with drugs and other nefarious activities.

Does your child wear baggy hip-hop clothing and listen to rap music?

Your child smokes crack.

Does your child wear tie-dyed t-shirts and listen to The Grateful Dead, Phish, Widespread Panic or Government Mule?

Your child smokes pot and takes LSD.

Does your child listen to The Velvet Underground or Nirvana?

Definitely heroin. If no track marks are evident, he or she shoots it under his toenails or eyelids.

Does your child listen to heavy metal music?

Methamphetamine.

Does your child listen to the blues?

Your child shot a man in Memphis.

Does your child listen to Marilyn Manson?

Your child worships The Devil and fucks dead kittens (unless your child is a girl, in which case she fucks live dobermans).

Does your child listen to techno dance music?

Ecstasy and ketamine again. That this was left out of the PSA described above is a huge disservice to paranoid parents.

Does your child wear ripped clothing, dye their hair funny colors and listen to punk rock?

Your child sniffs butyl nitrate and is probably bisexual, unless they are just a poseur.

Is your child a high-school cheerleader or football player?

You have nothing to worry about. Your child is a good old fashioned red blooded American alcoholic.

Does your child listen to 1940's swing music by black bandleaders?

Your child smokes marijuana, but spells it "marihuana".

Does your child lift weights?

Duh!! Steroids!! If your daughter lifts weights she probably also wolfs muff.

Is your child a teen starlet?

She smokes cigarettes and snorts cocaine.

Does your child wear Wranglers jeans, shirts with snap buttons and listen to country and/or western music?

Again, nothing to worry about. It's only beer and Jack Daniels.

Does your teenage daughter spend much of her free time at the mall?

Your daughter sucks cock for money.

Does your teenage son spend much of his free time at the mall?

Your son sucks cock for free.

Does your child listen to Christian rock?

Your child is an idiot. They also have no taste and no friends.

Would your child rather spend time on the internet than watching TV?

This is huge. The best you can hope for is that your child is a geek. Other signs of geekdom include reading when not required to (especially science fiction), Monty Python and Dungeons and Dragons. Dungeons and Dragons is also a sure sign of Satanism, so seek immediate religious counseling and possibly exorcism.

If internet use is high but no symptoms of geekdom exist, there is only one other possibility. Your child is meeting middle-aged men in chat rooms then meeting them at the mall to have sex with them.

Does your teen seem nervous around the opposite sex?

Your child is homosexual.

While the temptations facing teens in the 21st century are many, by familiarizing yourself with the warning signs and remaining vigilant, you can save your children. If your child exhibits any of these warning signs, they should be institutionalized at once.

The Sad Case of Ida Wilcox

2005-01-06T02:50:00.000-06:00

In the 22 years that The Price is Right has aired on CBS, a total of eight people have died during a taping of the show. Five were from heart attacks (three when called to Contestants' Row, one when called onto stage, and one at Johnny Olsen's shouting of "A new car!"). Two were the quiet passings of elderly audience members, and the last was the 1986 demise of one Ida Wilcox from Macon Georgia, described below.

Aside from Ms. Wilcox and the two heart attacks which occurred on stage, the shows still aired. The elderly audience members were quietly removed off-camera, and the three "come on down" heart attack victims were carried away on stretchers by studio paramedics amidst Bob Barker's assurances that they were OK. In each case a new audience member was called to Contestants' Row and the footage was edited for broadcast.

But the most spectacular Price is Right death remains Ida Wilcox.

Ida was called to contestants' row just before the second round. She was the picture of Southern-Baptist propriety, dressed in a navy-blue blouse with lace frills at the neck, matching blue slacks and a blue hat decorated with sprigs of baby's breath. Upon arrival, she excitedly informed Bob that it was her 78th birthday that day. In fact, she had been chosen as a contestant for that very reason.

Also in Contestants' Row that day was one Jimmy Reese, a body builder from Dubuque, Iowa. Weighing in at 300 pounds of solid muscle, the six-foot-three Jimmy dwarfed his podium. He wore stone-washed blue jeans and a black t-shirt a size too small, his gargantuan biceps straining the seams as they oozed from the arm holes. His demeanor however seemed incongruous with his mammoth proportions. He placed his bids sheepishly, stooping down to speak softly into the too-low microphone, and appeared noticeably nervous to be on television. He occasionally wiped beaded sweat from his forehead with his slab-of-meat-like hand.

At the beginning of round three, fortune smiled on Jimmy Reese as the item up for bid was a home gym system. It was the exact model Jimmy had coveted for several months, and he was intimately familiar with its price and specifications. He won the gym and made it on stage though he didn't win $100 for guessing the price precisely. He went on to win a grandfather clock and a dining room set playing the Clock Game.

Ida Wilcox, however, never made it on stage.

Inevitably, the time came for the first Showcase Showdown where Jimmy and two other contestants would have a chance to spin the big wheel. Jimmy was the second of the days first (and only) three contestants to approach the wheel. The Berkeley sorority girl who spun first ended up with a meager 65 cents.

Jimmy's turn came and he reached for a high grip on the wheel and pulled sharply down. Unfortunately, his nervousness had led his beefy palms to sweat and his grip slipped from the handle. The wheel slowly went "boop boop boop" but did not even complete a single turn. The audience erupted into laughter and Jimmy turned beet red. Bob paused the proceedings to gently rib Jimmy (much to the audience's amusement), saying "Now Jimmy, I know a big guy like you can get that wheel to go around at least once." Jimmy wiped his palms on his jeans and regained his composure. He made up his mind that this time he was going to spin that fucking wheel for all it was worth.

Jimmy grabbed hold of the wheel and squatted down. Then, using his over-developed thighs, he straightened and jumped 26 inches into the air turning the wheel backward as he rose. As he descended he held tight, directing his downward momentum into the big wheel. Upon landing, he continued to shove the front of the wheel downward with all his might until he had to let go or risk being pulled under it. Upon releasing his grip he stumbled backward and fell on the stage, bruising his tailbone.

Bob Barker and the other contestants on stage stared slack-jawed as the wheel spun like it had never spun before. The "boop boop boop" of the spinning wheel blended into one continuous tone, the numbers an unreadable blur of white, green and red.

After ten seconds, the wheel showed no signs of slowing down. Bob made no attempt to fill the time. The entire studio stared in rapt attention. After a few more seconds, a hideous creaking noise broke the silence. Expressions of awe turned to shock and fear throughout the studio as the left axle of the wheel broke. The wheel leaned 15 degrees from its upright position but still showed no signs of slowing. Moments later—though it surely seemed an eternity for the participants—the right axle broke free and the wheel hit the stage with a deafening thud. "Jesus Fucking Christ!" yelled Rod Roddy into his microphone as the wheel began to roll across the stage toward Contestants' Row.

The audience erupted into panicked screams. Housewives shrieked and sailors wept. Two of Barker's Beauties were flung hard to the stage as they grabbed at the wheel in a futile attempt to curb its momentum.

Poor Ida Wilcox was unable to flee quickly enough, and the wheel crashed into her podium, knocking it free and pinning her between it and the first row of seats. Two hours later she was officially pronounced dead due to internal bleeding at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Studio City, California.

Charges of involuntary manslaughter were briefly brought against Jimmy Reese but were quickly dropped. CBS settled out of court with the family of Ida Wilcox for an undisclosed sum. Jimmy spent the next three years in counseling and now works for Ron's Landscaping in Iowa City, Iowa. He still enjoys his home gym, grandfather clock and dining room set.

Am I Getting Enough Copper?

2005-01-04T23:19:00.000-06:00

So this morning I'm eating a bowl of Multi-Grain Cheerios. During breakfast, you can either stare blankly into space or read the cereal box. Now Multi-Grain Cheerios don't have fun little games on the box like Frosted Sugar Balls do, so I have to make do with the nutritional information. That's when I noticed that my Cheerios have 2% of the RDA of copper.

Now of course I'm familiar with iron as a nutrient, I even remember when Mr. Wizard blended up some corn flakes and sucked the iron filings out with a magnet. That was a few decades ago, so my memory of it may not be 100% but I'm pretty sure he said, "See Timmy? When they say iron, they fucking mean iron."

I'm also aware of zinc and magnesium as dietary metal requirements, and a quick perusal of the Periodic Table of the Elements reveals that even sodium and potassium are alkali metals. But copper? I'd never heard of copper in one's diet, let alone a recommended daily allowance of the stuff. I quickly investigated the pantry.

The only other product I found that listed copper was a box of plain Cheerios (as opposed to the Multi-Grain ones). Apparently the makers of Cheerios are making a half-hearted (I mean, 2%? Come on!) attempt to stamp out copper deficiency. It wasn't in any other cereals, or the graham crackers, marshmallows, chili paste or any of the other items I looked at. This would lead me to believe that unless I want to eat 50 bowls of Cheerios, I'm not getting enough copper in my diet. I find the idea that I should be eating copper far more disturbing than the idea that I'm not getting enough. I mean, I suppose I shouldn't, it makes about as much sense as eating iron, but what next? Should I pig out on albacore tuna to get my RDA of mercury? And am I getting enough tungsten in my diet? And what of iridium?

Anyway, I'm going to start swallowing a penny every day I think.

All right, genuine curiosity got the best of me so I decided to look up why the fuck I need to eat copper. According to this pdf document it functions as a "component of enzymes in iron metabolism". While this description isn't exactly clear, I think what they're trying to say is that copper helps you metabolize iron. That strikes me as ironic.

Fry's is Cool

2004-12-20T13:19:00.000-06:00

My house is on what must be the most shitty, antiquated piece of the power grid in the country. My power's always cutting out at the strangest times. We could be having an ice storm with 80 mph winds and everything will be fine. The next day will be calm but a bird will land on a power line somewhere and take down the whole fucking neighborhood. This apparent randomness ensures that my computer will be on whenever the power goes out.

It happened again a couple weeks ago, just like I described. Power stayed on through the snow, ice and wind, but the next day it went down. It didn't just suddenly switch off either, no that would have been nice. Instead it took its time deciding whether or not it wanted to go completely out. The lights dimmed, came back up and finally went out. Before I could reach the power switch on my computer it had cycled power three times in quick succession. Guess I should have set that "system restart on power failure" CMOS setting differently.

Anyway, I always thought I was safe having my shit on surge protectors, but when ComEd finally got us back up 3 hours later I discovered that every few minutes the signal to my monitor would disappear and not come back without a reboot. I'd try to do a clean shutdown blindly (Alt-F4, Alt-F4, Alt-F4....) but it didn't seem to work. Eventually through trial and error I figured out that as long as I was running without the nVidia drivers and using windows default VGA settings my computer would work. I could go clear up to 32-bit color at 1280 x 1024, but my refresh rate sucked stanky ass. Sure acted like a video card problem, and eventually by trying different drivers I was able to get my computer to not boot at all and give me an informative beep code confirming it. It was really annoying having my display suck so badly, but for some reason (oh yeah, I had no money!) I put up with it for a week or two.

So anyway, once I had it budgeted I knew I needed a new video card and a UPS so it wouldn't happen again. Well, I didn't feel like waiting for delivery and we all know that Best Buy completely sucks, so hey, perfect opportunity to check out the new Fry's Electronics in Downers Grove.

Now Fry's has been around for awhile in California and in the southwest, but I'd heard of them on slashdot and other places. Now they've come to Illinois in what I hope is the beginning of the nationwide slaughtering of Best Buy and CompUSA. I hate monopolies as much as the next guy, probably more, but I really hate Best Buy and CompUSA.

Overall I'm pretty impressed. Imagine if Best Buy was bigger, geared more towards computer stuff, had a really good selection, decent prices, and was decorated like a Barnes and Noble. That's Fry's, or at least the one in Downers Grove. They seemed to have everything a computer geek could want. It was not nearly as warehousey as I expected. In fact it wasn't warehousey at all (yes, I said warehousey again...and again!). Think they even had a coffee shop. Kind of a shame, because I imagine without all the fancy architecture and shit they could lower prices, but god forbid a stupid yuppie cock would have to shop without sipping a fucking latte.

As I mentioned, I was on this quest for a video card. A cheap one. I've got no illusions of my computer ever being able to run Doom III and I've got a Playstation2 for gaming, so as long as it can render Windows apps and porn I'm happy. I found a decent nVidia-based Leadtek card for $50. Looked it up online and found it for $46. Not bad if you consider shipping would've been $1.50 minimum. I'm willing to fork over the remaining $2.50 to have it now instead of now-plus-one-week. And you know what else? You can't get a $50 video card at Best Buy.

The other thing I needed was a UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply for those lacking the geek gene). Found a decent Belkin one with shutdown software for $35. Same one is available online for $33, but they weigh a ton, so with shipping considered I actually came out ahead on that one. When was the last time you saved money by not shopping online?

So in summary, Fry's is cool.

The Exorcist

2004-12-17T13:54:00.000-06:00

My wife and I rented The Exorcist a couple nights ago. I hadn't seen it since I was about 10, and even then I don't think I ever saw all of it. So anyway, I have no idea if it was the new "version you've never seen" version because she brought it home from the video store, and all I had was the disc. I'm thinking not, because the disc itself was nothing fancy. Double-sided, movie on one side, special features on the other. The movie itself had a long rambling introduction by William Friedkin which I watched about 30 seconds of. So actually I can't really say if it was long and rambling, but all indications were that it was going to be so I skipped it.

Hold on, I feel a brief digression coming on.

OK, so it was a double-sided DVD. These are rare, but they always confuse me. The disc is shiny on both sides instead of shiny on the bottom and screen-printed on the top. In tiny little letters near the hub, one side is marked one thing (typically "movie" or "wide-screen") and the other something else ("special features", "full frame", etc.). But because both surfaces are shiny read surfaces and because I'm not a fucking moron and know that DVD's and CD's are read from the bottom, my instinct is that the side marked "movie" should be in the tray facing down, i.e. the actual read surface containing the movie is marked "movie". Of course then I realize, "no, most of the world is fucking idiots" and insert the disc in a position that is to my mind upside-down. Of course this is the way it works.

OK, so back to the movie.

The movie was moderately scary and of course it contained about 40 seconds of Mike Oldfield's awesome Tubular Bells, which will be forever be known as "The Theme from the Exorcist" by people who think the markings on double-sided DVD's make perfect sense. Given that Tubular Bells clocks in at almost almost 49 minutes, it has become widely known as "The Theme from the Exorcist" based on about 1.4% of it being used in the movie. Anyway, Tubular Bells rules and I highly recomend it, though it can be slightly hard to find.

But anyway, watching this movie got me thinking. Not about faith and good and evil and all that shit. No, it got me thinking "Could this movie be made today?" I'm thinking definitely not with an R rating, probably not at all. Observe.

In 1973, a movie containing a scene of a 12-year-old girl repeatedly stabbing a crucifix into her bloodied crotch while saying "Let Jesus fuck you!" over and over can get an R rating.

In 2004, a movie featuring simulated oral sex by anatomically-incorrect puppets can't get an R rating. How far we've come.

Now even though I never believed in ancient religious mumbo-jumbo, there was a time when I wasn't a complete skeptic of all things paranormal. During this time, I always found demonic posession stories intriguing. They always talked of the posessed person being able to speak and understand hitherto unknown languages, contort themselves into bizarre positions, and of course perform the obligatory feats of telekinesis. A couple years ago I saw a "documentary" on the always reliable Discovery Channel about a boy that was exorcised in the 1940's, and they claimed some pretty remarkable shit happened. Supposedly this was the case that The Exorcist was based on. Seeing the movie again made me decide to look this up and see just how much of it was bullshit. Imagine my complete lack of surprise to learn that all of it was.

Here's the article. It's very long but well worth it.

They've Officially Run Out of Rock Stars

2004-12-14T13:04:00.000-06:00

The 2005 inductees to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame were announced today. They seem to be scraping the bottom of the barrel. I have to wonder if maybe somebody in Cleveland's going "Hmmm, maybe we shoul have limited ourselves to one a year...."

So let's go down the list, shall we?

U2

This is the choice I have the least trouble with. If we were talking about FatDave's Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, U2 would never even be considered, but we're talking about the real Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and apparently U2 had some kind of impact. I guess they may have even been cool for about 10 minutes in 1983. So anyway, I'll reluctantly give you U2. If they ever open the Overrated Self-Important Rock Star Hall of Fame, I expect Bono to be near the top of list (just above Sting).

The Pretenders

The Pretenders were far from horrible, but hall of fame material? Not in my book. They had a couple hits but so did Adam Ant. Shall we put him in the Hall of Fame? There's always 2006....

The O' Jays

Personally, I'd consider them more soul than anything else. And I don't think they ever did much besides Love Train. But Love Train made it onto Freedom Rock, and there's gotta be a Freedom Rock clause somewhere in the Hall of Fame by-laws.

Percy Sledge

See above, but substitute "When a Man Loves a Woman" for "Love Train" and take out the whole Freedom Rock thing. Nothing against Percy Sledge mind you, but to paraphrase Dire Straits, it ain't what I call rock & roll. Come to think of it, Dire Straits hasn't been inducted to the Hall of Fame. Yeah, I mean it's not like they're the Beatles or something, but c'mon, they're more rock & roll than Percy Sledge.

Buddy Guy

OK, you know what? Buddy Guy fucking rules. But you know what else? That's blues, not rock & roll. Was the blues a huge influence on rock music? Well duh. Was Buddy Guy specifically a huge influence on rock and roll? Why don't you ask Eric Clapton. But the blues is still not rock, at least not until you speed it up and play in straight-8ths instead of triplets. Now, there is an "early influences" category which contains the likes of Woodie Guthrie, T-Bone Walker and Les Paul. If that's where they're putting Buddy, then what took them so fucking long?

Interestingly, these artists' competition was Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five (not rock), the J. Geils Band (not legends) and Conway Twitty (you gotta be fucking kidding me).

Now obviously the term rock and roll is somewhat amorphous. What is and isn't rock is open to debate, especially when you consider genres like funk that are direct offshoots of rock. This is why I don't bitch about Curtis Mayfield and Parliament/Funkadelic being in the Hall of Fame. That and I like their music much more. Some would say soul is also an offshoot of rock, though I'm not convinced. I think it has an independent bloodline. But if you think Percy Sledge belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by all means write your own rant and send me an email telling me I'm an asshole.

And it should go without saying that the worth of one artist over another is largely a matter of opinion. I mean, there's maybe ten acts in the history of rock that everyone can point to as legendary. But this is a Hall of Fame we're talking about. Can we really let in any band that had a couple minor singles in the 80's?

Yet Another Reason to Hate the Holidays

2004-12-13T15:15:00.000-06:00

You know what else I hate about Christmas time besides that fucking Menard's jingle? Commercials where people give each other cars for Christmas. If you're so god-damned rich that you can surprise your spouse with a Lexus under the tree, I automatically hate you. I hate you, I hate your Japanese luxury car and I hate your fucking giant red bow you wrap around it.

Not that I automatically hate anyone who can afford a Lexus, shit, I could probably afford one if I didn't have kids. But you know, the whole act of surprising somebody with a $48,000 gift kind of rules out the discussion that should take place before a purchase of such magnitude. "Honey, I just put us $48,000 deeper in debt without consulting you, but Merry Christmas!"

And nevermind that for the same money you can get a much better car. Shit, you can get a WRX STi for $32K, and I guarantee it'll be more fun to drive than a fucking soul-less luxury car or a "mine's bigger than yours" SUV. For $44K you could have a fucking Corvette. Anybody who chooses a Lexus over a Corvette is fucking yuppie scum and deserves to die. And don't give me that "I have a family, I can't drive them around in a Corvette" bullshit. You can't drive them around in a Lexus either without little Jimmy getting cookie crumbs all over the leather. If that's your concern, buy a fucking minivan or station wagon. Here's a nice wagon.

Paul McCartney Superbowl Half-Time

2004-11-22T15:28:00.000-06:00

OK, so I heard today that Sir Paul McCartney's going to be this year's halftime entertainment at the Superbowl. I always liked John better, but he hasn't performed live since 1980.

But you know what I'd do if I was Paul McCartney? Yes, of course I'd smoke a lot of weed, but you know what I'd do if I was Paul McCartney at the Superbowl? I'd whip my cock out. I'd sing "Hi, Hi, Hi" and right at the part that goes "like a rabbit, gonna grab it, gonna do it 'til the night is done" I'd whip my cock right out, wag it around and keep right on singing. I mean, so many uptight Americans were traumatized by the sight of Janet Jackson's crusty shriveled-up nipple last year, imagine their shock at the sight of McCartney's veiny fuckhammer.

I would really love to see this happen. Not because of some long-standing desire to see McCartney's tool, but because if so many Americans are so offended by nudity they should have it rubbed in their faces. Well, not literally. Unless they're into that.

And it would be particularly sweet because McCartney was an obvious "safe" choice for entertainment. He should be offended. Rock & roll should never be deemed safe by the powers that be. Rock and roll is about rebellion, and what could be more rebellious than showing your cock on American TV? He can surely afford the fines, and what, he'd be banned from football? I'm sure he gives two fucks about American football.

So come on Paul, show some of that old rock & roll spirit and whip out your cock during the Superbowl.

It's beginning to look a lot like that fucking Menard's jingle

2004-11-20T16:13:00.000-06:00

I heard that fucking Menard's Christmas jingle today on the radio. There's much to dread about the holidays, but this insidious little bit of concentrated evil sneaks up on me every year. You know the one that goes something like:

Christmas time is here
with [something] and good cheer
[something something] good tidings to you
Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas
[blah blah blah]
Warm Season's Greetings to you all from Menard's

I manage to drive it from my head by the middle of January each year, but every November there it is again, lurking in the spaces between songs on classic-rock radio, ready to pounce and drag its fingernails across my brain. The "Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas" part is particularly sinister. It makes me want to beat those singers silly with a sock full of quarters just as soon as I'm done clawing my fucking eyes out.

Now as a shitty musician myself, I have the utmost respect for jingle-writers. These are people who have actually found a way to make a living writing songs that doesn't involve prancing around like a fairy on MTV or getting reamed by a record company. So hats off to the majority of jingle-writers out there.

But the fuckers who wrote this god-forsaken Menard's Christmas thing, well, I hope there's a level of hell devoted entirely to them. I'm pretty sure there's a level that plays their unholy jingle nonstop.

Blog Moved

2004-11-20T16:07:00.000-06:00

I've moved these pages to http://www.bileduct.com/blog/. There should be no more updates to fatdave.blogspot.com.

The Laser Straight

2004-11-19T22:01:00.000-06:00

OK, so I'm a lucky bastard that gets to work from home. Because of this, I often end up working odd hours. I sometimes end up going to bed around 3AM watching reruns of Conan O'Brien.

The commercials at 3AM are a different breed. You don't see McDonalds, Ford or Sprite ads. You see countless get-rich-quick schemes, the Dale Earnhardt decorative clock and the pan with the collander built into the lid so you can drain your noodles without them all sliding down the drain leaving you frustrated and noodleless.

My personal favorite is the Laser Straight.

Now the Laser Straight isn't anything special in itself, though I suppose $20 is a pretty good price for a laser level. But I love the commercial for other reasons.

A few seconds into the commercial, the announcer says that the Laser Straight uses "refractive lens technology". That certainly sounds impressive. But to drive the point home, they even put a graphic up: "Refractive Lens Technology". Amazing that they can bring us a technological breakthrough like refractive lens technology for a mere $19.99.

But wait a minute. Doesn't "to refract" mean to bend light waves (assuming they're not particles at the time, but that's a whole other ball of tofu)? And don't all lenses refract? I mean, isn't that the sole purpose of a lens, to refract light? Hmmm, better check....

dictionary.com:

lens
A ground or molded piece of glass, plastic, or other transparent material with opposite surfaces either or both of which are curved, by means of which light rays are refracted so that they converge or diverge to form an image.

Yup. Lenses refract. Whoda thunk? So the Laser Straight has a fucking lens. Impressive.

Now as if the marvel of refractive lens technology wasn't enough, if you act now you also receive the Laser Straight Studfinder. I don't think lasers play any part in the Laser Straight Studfinder, because last time I checked lasers couldn't penetrate sheetrock. Well, maybe some heavy-duty military black project lasers could, but then your walls would be all fucked up. But it is easy to find a stud if you burn holes in the drywall.

This is not a blog.

2004-11-19T18:47:00.000-06:00

The last thing I want to do is jump on a bandwagon. No, wait, that's the second-to-last thing I want to do. The last thing I want to do is to jump on a bandwagon late. You know, run to catch up to a bandwagon everybody else has jumped on 6 to 8 months ago. Or 12 to 24 months ago. Whatever and whenever, that's the last thing I want to do. OK, maybe not the absolute last thing, I mean I have to consider that Spanish Inquisition shit where they'd make a slit in your abdomen, pull out your small intestine, nail it to a pole then whip you into walking around the pole while your intestines pull out and wrap around it. I mean sure, I'd rather jump on a bandwagon than go through that.

But anyway, this is not a blog.

This is just a place for me to put random bullshit I come up with rather than mailing it to all my friends. They probably get sick of my random bullshit in their inboxes. None of my friends have ever said "Gee Dave, I'm getting pretty sick of your random bullshit," but then none have said "I really like getting random bullshit from you" either. So by putting it here, I can just tell them "Hey, go to this site (which isn't really a blog despite looking an awful lot like one) anytime you feel like reading my random bullshit."

Now, even though this is not a blog, it does have some traits it shares with a blog. For instance it's hosted at blogspot.com. Always the geek, I considerred writing my own not-a-blog software. Actually, I did more than consider it, I started to write it. But like most of my projects, I lost interest long before it was complete, and after all there are people foolish enough to pay me to write code, so better to write the code that keeps putting cats on the table. But despite not having my custom not-a-blog software written, I continued to have stupid shit to say and therefore continued to annoy my friends. So blogspot it is. Even though this isn't a blog.

Another bloglike trait of this non-blog is that it organizes posts by date. And allows user comments. Well can I help that? I mean, I gotta work with what blogspot gives me, you know? The fact that my custom not-a-blog software would have eventually incorprated these features in no way makes it more blog-like. OK, maybe blog-like, but a wise man once said "blog-like does not a blog make." OK, it wasn't a wise man, it was me.

And sure, blogspot doesn't make me allow comments, and they certainly don't make me allow anonymous ones. But as long as I'm posting random bullshit here for my friends to read (or more likely not read), who am I to say that the world-at-large can't read them too? And if they can read them then shouldn't they be allowed to comment on them? You know, free speech, communication revolution and all that?

But even given these blog-like traits, this is still not a blog. No, really. It's not.