Editorial Cartoon Satire on Family Guy

Two of my favorite things: editorial cartoons and Family Guy. Bad part is, with some cartoonists, I can totally see the fat cat and the Statute of Liberty. But didn't someone say that if you have to label things in an editorial cartoon, you're not doing it well?

Best Billboard Ever

Best Billboard Ever
Originally uploaded by DJBrianE.

Heh heh heh.

MySpace references

Just because I'm in the process of de-boring my MySpace pages, and I have yet to find a decent set of MySpace references on the Internet, I made two from various sources, mostly the references at http://www.tagtooga.com/.
MySpace Customization Code Reference
and
MySpace Selector Reference

Some meme someone sent me

If by meme you mean something to waste time with.

The ABCs of ... Pierce

Accent: Mostly southern. It really depends on the day and the word and who I’ve been around lately.

Booze: Don’t hardly drink no more. When I do, it’s been margaritas or beer. Back in high school and the Marines, when I was the devastated driver, it was anything that sat still long enough; a particular favorite was Hi-C Fruit Punch and Everclear in a big-ass gas station mug.

Chore I Hate: Dealing with the litter box. Of course it’s my job.

Dog or Cat: One of each right now.

Essential Electronics: Computer. I start to get twitchy if I go too long without.

Favorite Cologne: None. I’ve always avoided the stuff; must be an after-effect of the doused-in-Polo years. That shit still makes me gag.

Gold or Silver: Silver. Some white gold, because we couldn’t find wedding rings we liked in silver.

Hometown: Sherwood, Ark., a bedroom community north of Little Rock.

Insomnia: All the time. More of a problem now that I have apnea. Or maybe because I’m bipolar.

Job Title: None right now. Don’t miss having one; miss working, though.

Kids: One of each. Girl’s five and damned near a clone of me; boy’s three, looks more like mom but has some of my more endearing qualities.

Living arrangements: In a rental house on a dead-end street behind a hospital with a trauma center and helipad, with wife, kids, animals and a whole lot of junk.

Most admirable traits: Loyalty, intelligence, humor, determination.

Not going to cop to: All the Disney Channel shows I like: Jojo’s Circus, Go Baby, Charlie & Lola, Stanley, The Koala Brothers, Shanna’s Show, Kim Possible. KP’s probably the hardest to explain. I mean, the rest are right down the kids’ alley.

Overnight hospital stays: Let’s see, appendicitis as a kid, broken finger as a Marine, uvulopalatopharyngoplasy/polypectomy/tonsilectomy as an AP reporter, births of my children (though I really didn’t have to stay, since I didn’t do much work).

Phobias: Bugs and spiders; deep water.

Quote: There are things it is better to try to fix with no chance of success than to allow to continue without protest; it’s not that you may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, but if you pile on, maybe you put it one day closer to breaking.

Religion: None. I don't need a magic fairy to blame/thank for my situation.

Siblings: One, a sister, 13 days short of being 13 years younger than I. Thank you very much banned herbicide, if you’d have stayed legal for a few more years, I’d have been an only child. We actually get along now that she’s not sucking the available resources out of our family.

Time I wake up: When I have to. Given my druthers, it’s around 10, but I don’t want to sleep before 4.

Unusual talent or skill: Ability to see dust on my eyeballs.

Vegetables I love: Brussels sprouts and turnip greens

Worst habit: Smoking when I smoke, procrastinating when I procrastinate

X-rays: So many I should glow in the dark

Yummy foods I make: Fried pickles, cornbread, steak, spaghetti, creamy garlic mashed potatoes. Excuse me, I gotta go eat now.

Zodiac sign: Libra, the best one of all.

Mailing it in, some with reason, some without

So I'm trying to find out when I "bought" a Motorola HS850 Bluetooth headset from CompUSA. I put bought in scare quotes above because I actually received it as a replacement for a Jabra headset whose battery had pooped out that had gone off the market and that I had, for some reason, bought the super deluxe extended warranty. So they said, here, you can have this one instead. Worked for me. And, my financial situation being far graver than when I purchased the original headset, I passed on the SDEW. Not that it may have mattered.
You see, that whole thing was an example of great customer service, because the original purchase was something like 30 months in the past, and if the original receipt still existed, I had no clue where it was. So I called, and a very nice person at the store in Virginia said they could look up the transaction at the store in Arkansas and print me out a duplicate receipt to use to get a new headset.
Today, everything is different. The Alexandria, Va. store where I "bought" the new headset is closing, along with a ton of others, and the manager couldn't be bothered to do more than tell me to call Columbia, Md. (And I can totally see that--I mean, he's screwed even more than when he was trying to get a good work effort out of people whose job prospects led them to CompUSA.) Columbia said it couldn't look up another store's receipts. The national 800 number was apparently designed by people who wanted to talk to anyone but a regular everyday customer, because there wasn't an option for anyone not on the Technology Assistance Plan, a Corporate Customer, interested in training, or some combination thereof.
On the other hand, Motorola is at least being nicely inquisitive about the situation. We'll see how that goes. And I can get a new one for under $40 on Amazon, but I hate buying things that are still under warranty.

Thoughts on crappy feet

So it's 1:00 am, and I'm doing some emergency toenail repair and antifungal treatment, and it occurs to me that if the chiropractor I'm getting a referral for Friday is any good, I may as well start running again. My feet are in the same horrible shape they were when I was a Marine!
Pierce

xkcd: Escalators

I know what you mean, Randall.

It's been a hard day at the zoo

MVA 1, Pierce 0

As I sat waiting almost two hours to pay the Maryland MVA at least part of $1,130 we owe because of arcane insurance regulations, so I won't have to drive my wife (edited from "wide"--apparently the predictive text engine in my phone has a sense of humor about my 100-pounds-after-two-kids better half) everywhere anymore, I never thought they'd require us both to be here. Score one for perverted bureaucracy, I guess.

Dirty thoughts

I'm not sure there's enough drugs or therapy available for someone who thinks there's a salacious interpretation to this photo. Of course, it doesn't help that the product advertised is named HotRecorder, does it?

Who says Germans don't have a sense of humor

Somehow, I just can't see this ad flying in the US, at least not without mobilizing major metropolitan police and homeland security apparatuses. But in Germany, it flies. (Via Boing Boing.)

Kane's third birthday

And he's made it to three! There have been times I was wondering if he would. But he's there now and that opens up a whole new world of small-parted toys and other dangerous items! If he only realized!

Laura's first school picture

Sometimes the passage hits you like a ton of bricks.
I didn't expect to be a father, not really.
End of the line, blaze of glory, drunken war whoop!
But she changed that, and without reservation I'm glad.
I can't imagine not having her in my life.
I can't imagine how dark it would really be without her light.
Her smile, her sharp wit, her silliness.
I love you.

The Reality-Based Community: Fair is fair

Reposted in its hilarious entirity, "Fair is Fair" by Michael O'Hare at RBC:

The "worst president ever?" meme has floated from bitter-liberal whining lounges to mainstream venues and plutocrats like Donald Trump, who should know which side their bread is buttered on. This piling-on in the face of the clear facts has to stop if Democrats want to keep a shred of intellectual respectability.
History simply will not support this level of condemnation. Never mind presidents from decades back, here are five contemporary presidents who completely refute the idea that
Bush is the worst:
None of the antiwar protesters arrested in Washington Friday night were
beaten in captivity. Not a single fractured skull or broken jaw. Bush is much more protective of civil rights and free speech than Robert Mugabe, president of Zimbabwe.
Bush has never, ever, claimed to have an herbal AIDS cure revealed by ancestors in a dream, nor touted it to replace anti-retroviral drugs. Bush is much less anti-scientific than
Yahya Jammeh, president of Gambia.
The number of US dissidents killed overseas by plutonium poisoning is zero, and the number
of US businessmen ruined and imprisoned for opposing the government is also zero. Bush is much more respectful of law and property than Vladimir Putin, president of Russia.
Bush hasn’t tried to fire even one Supreme Court justice, much less a chief justice. He’s much more respectful of separation of powers than Pervez Musharraf, president of Pakistan.
Bush hasn’t named a single city, river, month, or day of the week after himself, and aggressive research has turned up no gold-plated colossal statues of him, not even silver-plated. Bush is much less egotistical and narcissistic than Sapurmurat Niyazov, the late president of Turkmenistan.
George W. Bush, better than many presidents; let's give credit where credit is due.

WSJ vs. NYT in a subscription model deathmatch

Over at the Freakonomics blog, there was some discussion of why the Wall Street Journal has a subscription wall while almost every other newspaper in America allows free online access to its news product. Author Steven Levitt opined that someone has to be wrong: the WSJ or the rest of the newspaper industry.
I posted multiple comments, not so much because I had a lot to say, but because the comment engine on Levitt's blog (probably wisely) strips out HTML tags and properly renders multiple spaces as a single space. (No, I have no idea what the comment engine here does. I don't comment on my own blog. That'd be kinda onanistic.) But my point was that the WSJ and the New York Times have almost inverse pay/free models and good/crappy products. To wit:

	New York Times	Wall Street Journal
News Pages	Spotty (mostly bad) but free	Good but costly
Editorial Pages	Spotty (mostly good) but costly	Bad but free

(One of the nice things about having your own blog is the ability to drill down to the HTML and hand code a damned table when you need to.)
What may be at work here is that the WSJ is an outlier, a special case: a truly national business paper that is unique and can charge for access to its news content because of its intrinsic value. (Well, that and the added value of being from the Wall Street Journal, whose news pages have been above reproach despite the lunacy over at Editorial, probably a far greater achievement than most people realize.)

Ding dong the Frank is gone

I suppose it's bad form to enjoy the semi-forced retirement of an 80-some-odd-year-old man, but I've been waiting for Frank Broyles to retire (or the other option, because apparently he got the same deal as Arkansas athletic director that federal judges do) for a damned long time. Now to get to cutting the Nutt, and maybe it really will be the year of the pig!

Victory Is Not an Option - washingtonpost.com

The new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq starkly delineates the gulf that separates President Bush's illusions from the realities of the war.

That first line of Gen. Odom's Op-Ed in the Washington Post is really all you need to read. The rest is Odom's methodical delineation of what's gone wrong and what we can do to make it right and just how we can get our collective nuts out of the roaring fire Bush and company lit in Iraq (and are trying, like demented, defrocked Boy Scouts intent on a pyromania badge, to light in Iran). That we have a president (and for real nuttiness, see Vice President Cheney on any given day; it's quite an accomplishment to make Bush look like he's in touch, but Cheney sometimes manages it) who can't see past his illusions is bad enough; that we have one whose illusions are killing and maiming American soldiers and Marines (who come back to be treated like shit at Walter Reed, apparently) by the truckload is unforgivable. I don't care that the right wing will whip up its nut cases with a cry of "It's retaliation for Clinton!", we've got to impeach Bush and Cheney before there's a mushroom cloud over Tehran. The American soul has been besmirched enough, damn it!

Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

While this introduction lacks something for people who don't read in eyeblinks, it's still the best introduction to the concepts underlying the Web 2.0 phenomenon. From an anthropology prof at Kansas State.

Biden's foot-in-mouth moment

Biden:

"I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy," he said. "I mean, that's a storybook, man."

Lurch at Main and Central:

What Senator Biden apparently said was pretty simple in my mind. He was trying to be graciously complimentary. I focused on the word “clean” and felt he meant “clean cut”. With the aid of the always-useful second thought I think he also meant clean as in the sense of “free of baggage,” most especially so after CNN committed journalism and put Fox Noise Channel’s attempted madrassa slur to bed. It’s important to remember that Senator Biden was speaking extemporaneously, and everyone fluffs now and again.

The problem, as always, is context, and I think here we have a case of focusing exclusively on a single word rather than the statement as a whole. Set aside the fact that whatever his good points, Barack Obama isn't the first mainstream blah blah blah. Mainstream actual viable politician well regarded in his party and whatever else passes for an atmosphere a few miles west of me? Maybe, though that's less of his own doing than we would like to believe (but maybe more than my inner cynic says).

Second, look at the four adjectives he chose: articulate, bright, clean and good-looking. The only one I would consider an always unquestionable complement is good-looking, though it bespeaks a certain vapidity. (And I always have to question what people mean by that--is it that Obama isn't dark? Is Biden comforted, as so many have been before, by the presence, real or imagened, of some leavening?)

Bright has always stuck me as mixed bag, an impression somewhat bolstered by the definition in Merriam-Webster's online dictionary:

3 a : showing mental quickness, ready understanding or learning, prompt responses, or originality b : showing lively animation, vivacity, or activity c : showing glib quickness or facile resourcefulness without deep intellectuality

I'm not saying Biden was definitely thinking about c, but even the a definition can be seen as favoring quickness over depth of understanding.

Now for the word that everyone is tripping over: clean. I, too, heard a lot more "clean cut" and "scandal free" (as if any Democrat will long remain so in the current media environment), and thus my panties stayed moderately unbunched. Again, I thought it was foolish diction, but I'm pretty sure part of the job description for a senator is to talk and talk and talk and talk, especially on hot topics, especially off the cuff, especially in front of cameras, especially so as not to step on your dick--and here Biden failed miserably.

Articulate is the one that really sealed the deal for me. I don't care if he didn't mean it negatively and truly doesn't have a racist bone in his body (which I highly doubt, as it seems to be ground into our genes to some extent) or whatever, but how many kinds of fool do you have to be to go anywhere near such a stand-in for the dismissive "well spoken"? If you're trying to say Obama is a powerful public speaker, say that. If you're trying to say he has a pleasant speaking voice, say that. Set a staffer on finding a one- or two-word well known synonym so the press corps won't get too far behind in scribbling your words, but don't take a quicksand shortcut like "articulate." Again, not even close to fulfilling the job requirements.

While I don't think we need to do what should have been done to Trent Lott, I'm not upset that Biden's out of the race--I would fully support term limits on presidential campaigns some days, as these same characters keep popping up, in both major parties and especially in all the little fun parties, thinking that this will be the year that the talking points they developed five elections or more ago will finally resonate with the voting public--and given his record and the opponents he already had, there's almost no chance I would have voted for him. I guess I'd rather all incompetents self-destructed with such quickness, and without taking the whole country and much of the world with them.

Arkansas Coach Nutt a Candidate for Parcells' Cowbows Gig

Cowboys coach Bill Parcells retires - Yahoo! News
Anyone care to take up a collection to duct tape Frank Broyles to Nutt and make a clean sweep of it?

How about "We don't feel like answering stupid questions, Condi"?

U.S. Tries to Interpret China’s Silence Over Test - New York Times
Are we headed to a new form of Kremlinology, where we think ourselves into knots because our enemies (and the neutral parties and even our allies), because they're not like we are, can't be expected to react at least as irrationally as we do or in the same way. Not being a diplomat, I can't say.
Will it lead to decades of overestimation of the Chinese or Iranian or Elbonian threat? Likely.
Does this bother those positioned to make money off the inevitable government contracts? Not at all. See War is a Racket by Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler, USMC, the proceedings of the Truman Commission, etc. ad naseum.

Amazing sunset!

Don't know what it was about yesterday's sky, but it was a doozy. Shot from the platform at the Silver Spring Metro Station.

The Post-Perfect Storm

Today's Washington Post may be a weather map to the perfect storm that has hit America.

Upper left: A story about how the government been robbing Peter (in this case climate research) to pay Paul (Mars, bitches!, etc.). I mean screw figuring out what's wrong with the house we live in, let's daydream about a trip to Australia by car!

Upper middle: A digital day in the life. I'm always amazed at how amazed professional, top-tier reporters can be amazed by things I've known about for months if not years. I've ceased to be amazed at their inability to make the leap necessary to take the story from the obvious (e.g., the phone company has tracked phone calls ever since it began charging money for it, i.e., forever) to deeper understanding (it's the low cost of storage, the consolidation of data, the mining of data, the "national security" backdoors that are so ineptly constructed that they leave portals into people's lives that a script kiddie could drive a black ice Hummer through that really matter, not that suddenly that we notice how much of our lives occur in public).

Upper right: Bush says after years of running the budget into the ground with a compliant, Republican-run (but I repeat myself) Congress, it's now up to the new Democratic-run (barely in one house, lest we forget) Congress to change his diaper, clean his backside, exchange any clothing soiled by his excesses, and, for good measure, prevent any further blowouts--all while letting him run amok in Iraq and at home. He needs the Hannibal Lecter handtruck treatment.

Right side, second story: It seems the Iraqi "government" still can't hold a lynching without screwing something up. Here's a first step to not embarrassing yourself while hanging people: Stop hanging people. At least bring back the hooded, muscled man with the scimitar and give the beheadings a bit more grandeur, people. Or maybe something more civilized, like not rushing headlong to kill anyone and making sure not only that you have had a fair trial, but fair punishment as well.

Right side, third story: Yes, folks, it's been five years since the first person was hauled to Gitmo from far off lands, possibly never to return, face anything resembling a fair trial, or otherwise leave the hell on earth America has built next to the Communist Paradise of the West.

And at the lower left: Ladies and gentlemen, one of the things the Post does pretty well, packing a lot of localish crap into a single story on A1. If you've driven around here and had to stop for anything other than gas, chances are you got a parking ticket. Along with specious moving violations and other draconian non-moving offenses, this has got to be one of the top revenue sources for local governments in the region.

Metro: Martin Luther King? Look in Metro. He's not A1 material anymore. Yesterday's news. Beyond that, today's Metro section is a prime example of the Post's attitudes of "eff local, we don't need no stinkin' suburbs" and "Virginia uber alles" (the second prevails if there's a conflict). Would it have killed them to put a Maryland story on A1 in the Maryland Edition instead of the Virginia parking ticket pastiche? Maybe the big school construction thing? But of course, anyone reading a newspaper is too old to have kids, or too smart to live in Maryland or D.C.

Business: Golly gee, a mirror that has a Web cam and can display IMs. Alert Steve Jobs. (See earlier snark about journalists and technology.) Why the hell, other than the huge monetary impact it has on Big Pharma, is the BioShield (government preparedness for bio-attack) story here? There isn't even a business mentioned on the section front. Look honey, a navel-gazing newspaper business story (tip to readers: stick to Editor and Publisher, they have a clue about the business without being mired in it), and something about a hotel magnate blogging. Business sections after holidays suck even worse than usual, because that's when the reporters pretend they're with the Style section and (usually--there are some fine business writers around, including some at the Post) show why they aren't.

Sports: Apparently the Sports section's recipe for survival is 1 part game recap and stats anyone with an Internet connection could have read for 8-16 hours + 2 parts columnists, half panderers and half shockers, + some graphics and agate, most of which has again been available, free, online to anyone interested enough to look for it, plus lots of TV time for Tony "I'll make you miss Dennis Miller" Kornheiser and Mike Wilbon. I sometimes think the only people who read agate are non-stats freaks following out of town teams.

Health: Decent article on warm-winter caused allergies inside aside, the rest is middling to poor.

Style: Finally, something I'm at an absolute loss for explaining: Yet again, the Style section is far more relevant and important, e.g. today's coverage of the Appeal for Redress movement, than the "news" sections of the newspaper. Hell, it even does a good job with congressional representation for D.C. But it's the Style section. The writers, while one of the finest Style section stables in the land, are constrained by the section itself: snappy, scrappy writing in the space allowed by all the Kids Post, funnies, puzzles (not that, heaven forfend, I am advocating a reduction in those three; they are probably the best parts of the paper day in and day out), celebrity trash, television, music, theater, quirky crap and all the other things that help the Style section speak to people with too much free time, free money or both (those latter could be abolished without much crying from me).

So there you have it: Passing of the buck on a monumental scale, not that the story would lead you to any such conclusion; a story far too clueless for consumption in what may be one of the best informed, technologically adept metro areas in the nation; national embarrassment; MLK relegated to Metro because that was yesterday, just like your civil rights; traffic tickets! (please ignore our paltry Metro coverage); well, we have the dysfunctional, blame-everyone-else CEO president, why not cover government in the Business pages; Marriott blogs!; sports is life, Sports section is irrelevant; Style's got at least two stories that should be on the front page of the paper, much less given the Leeza-Gibbons-in-print treatment. And it's still a top ten American newspaper, no doubt.

From the "Deranged Data" Files

According to the National Insurance Crime Bureau, the most stolen car in the state of Kentucky is ... the 1986 Olds Cutlass. An '86 Cutlass Ciera S 2 Dr Coupe with 150,000 miles, 2 barrel carb and automatic transmission in average condition would run you about $196 from a private party in Henderson, Ky. according to Edmunds. (Zip code 42420 chose at random from Kentucky zip codes. Why? Because I can.)

WTFO?

How many of these are even still running and in stealing-worthy condition?

Is there some kind of Cutlass-pimping culture that values the originality and verve of the '86 above all?

Have the Hatfields and McCoys gone from shooting each other to playing Capture the Cutlass?

Freakin' weird, it is.

Our royal family lineage

In one of those weird moments where random crap seems really appropriate, the Presley family titles:

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Sir Pierce the Pompous of Hope End Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

My Wife's Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Her Noble Excellency Kelly the Hunted of Throcking in the Hole Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

My Daughter's Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Her Imperial Majesty Laura the Ineffable of Biggleswade by Biscuit Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

My Son's Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: His Most Serene Highness Lord Kane the Dulcet of Gallop Hophill Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title