byoolin's trebuchet

Michael Lohan Talks To God.

2010-09-03T13:45:00.000-07:00

NEWS ITEM: Lindsay Lohan's father Michael claims God told him to build a rehab center.

I can only imagine that it went down very much like Bill Cosby's "Noah" routine.

GOD: Lohan!

LOHAN: Somebody call?

GOD: Lohan!

LOHAN: Who is that?

GOD: It's the Lord, Lohan.

LOHAN: Riiiiiight! Where are ya? What you want? I've been good.

GOD: I want you to build a rehab center.

LOHAN: Riiiiiight! What's in it for me?

GOD: Get someone to put up three times as much money as you'll need. Build it 300 meters by 80 meters by 40 meters.

LOHAN: Riiiiiight! Whats a meter?

GOD: You don't know what a meter is? Oh, yeah, I forgot - only America and Burma don't use the metric system anymore. Don't worry about it for now, Lohan. You can google it later. When you get it done, go out into the world and collect all of the rubes and halfwits you can get your hands on - male and female - and put them into the rehab center.

LOHAN: Riiiiiight! Who is this, really? What's going on? How come you want me to do all these weird things?

GOD: I'm going to destroy the world.

LOHAN: Riiiiiight! Am I on Candid Camera?

GOD: No, but there might be a reality series in it for you.

LOHAN: ALLLLLLLLL-Riiiiiight!

Maybe that's where he keeps his briefs.

2010-07-23T15:10:00.000-07:00

Today on the CBC News website:

"The Supreme Court of Canada has upheld $5,000 in damages against British Columbia for breaching the charter rights of a Vancouver lawyer strip-searched by police who wrongly thought he was going to throw a pie at [then-Prime Minister] Jean Chrétien."

It's a fascinating story and a great example of what happens when the police get overstimulated. But one question is left unanswered:

Even if the cops legitimately thought that the counsel for the defense had been planning to throw a pie, what, exactly, did they think he was hiding up his ass that they had to strip-search him - a rolling pin?

How else may I provide excellent customer service to you today?

2010-07-18T15:49:00.000-07:00

Highlights of my recent chat with a representative of Sprint's Online Customer Service:

6:11:00 PM : [SPRINT] Connected to sprint.ehosts.net

6:11:00 PM : [SPRINT] Session ID: 582726

----

6:12:26 PM : [SPRINT] Thank you for contacting Sprint. My name is ********.

6:12:57 PM : [ME]: Hi ********. I need to cancel service on two of my lines.

----

6:16:42 PM : [SPRINT]: May I know which lines to be canceled?

6:17:10 PM : [ME]: XXX-XXXX and XXX-XXXX.

----

6:29:25 PM : [SPRINT]: You can easily cancel the lines/account by calling Account Service Department at -(888) 211-4727

6:29:56 PM : [ME]: Okay - so I still have to call the account service dept?
----

6:30:08 PM : [SPRINT]: Yes.

6:30:45 PM : [SPRINT]: The services are canceled by the account service department.

I thought places like this paid bonuses on how quickly they got people off the line?

Yes, but I TYPE like Jack Kerouac.

2010-07-17T10:36:00.000-07:00

I read an Associated Press article by Jake Coyle on the Washington Post's website about the popularity of a site called I Write Like which allows people to paste in a few paragraphs of text, compare it to a database of works by about 50 authors, and then tell them which author's style the software thinks they resemble.

Coyle writes that when others tried it out, I Write Like thought one of Mel Gibson's obscenity-laced phone tirades directed at his ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva positively Margaret Atwoodian, while Margaret's writings turned out to be Steven Kingian, a distinction shared by Herman Melville.

I uploaded a few examples of my own (that's not) writing (that's typing) and got a different result every time. I write like Stephen King; I write like Charles Dickens; I write like James Joyce; I write like Kurt Vonnegut. It's good company, even if I turn out not to write anything like my homegirl Peggy Atwood. I'm relieved that none of my writing samples came back - as other people's have - with the alarming words, "You write like Dan Brown."

It could have been worse: "You write like the guy in your legal department who drafted the boilerplate Master Software Development Agreement With Intellectual Property Rights."

Shadows.

2010-07-17T09:56:00.001-07:00

Originally uploaded by Brian Bjolin

Last weekend, near Dundas St. W and Chestnut St., Toronto.

In Which I Welcome Myself Home.

2010-07-01T06:45:00.000-07:00

It's my first Canada Day at home in eight years. It seems only appropriate that I might enumerate a few of the many, many, many things that make me glad to be back.

So, without further ado...

Top Ten Reasons I Moved Back To Canada:

10: It snows 362 days a year in Canada.
9: The only occasion one ever has to think about Sarah Palin is to fill space in some stupid list.
8: Overwhelmed by the irreconcilable incongruity of America: so many cops, so few Tim Hortons.
7: Canada's late-night tv host wars were settled long ago. All hail George Strombopolous!
6: Don Cherry on Hockey Night In Canada is a much more reliable source of bizarre outfits than peopleofwalmart.com.
5: Having successfully ousted President Bush, I must now do the same to Prime Minister Harper.
4: I will need medical care in 10-20 years, so I am getting in line now.
3: On Canadian tv, they show boobies [note to self: get a tv].
2: I received an email from HM Queen Elizabeth II promising me cash if I helped her with a certain banking transaction.
1: It's my home and native land, yo.

Warning

2010-06-21T15:44:00.000-07:00

The 22nd Toronto Fringe Festival starts next week; with more than 150 theatre companies and 800 performers involved, it's Toronto's largest theatre festival. It's got something for everyone, and some things not for everyone.

It's not just the old bugaboos, either, like "mature content," "violence," or "language" (and one supposes this last one should be inferred to mean the bad, coarse, or vulgar sense of the word, not the French or German). Consider some of the other audience advisory warnings that accompany the synopses of the various productions:

Warning: Awkward Situations, Adult References To The Elderly
Warning: Gunshots
Warning: Smoking Herbal Cigarettes
Warning: Awesome
Warning: Fog Machine
Warning: Trumpet
Warning: Hedonism, Tomfoolery, Indulgently Floral Language
Warning: Language, Nudity, Strobe Lighting, Fog Machine, Simulated Drug and Alcohol Use
Warning: Content, Language, Dancing Vagina
Warning: Content, Nudity, Audience Participation, Lap Dancing, And More!

Mama always worried that I'd end up in the big city, reveling in hedonism, tomfoolery and indulgently floral language - especially in the making of awkward references to grandma and grandpa. (Somehow, I doubt she'd have been able to bring herself to utter the phrase, "dancing vagina.") And now look at me: fire up the fog machine!

Signs of Toronto

2010-05-09T20:09:00.000-07:00

Click on any photo to launch a larger version in another window.

Poutine seems to be well on its way to becoming The Next Big Thing in dining in Toronto. There are a number of restaurants dedicated to it, and even places with other gastronomical concerns seem to want to get in on the action.

Within a few hundred metres of Saigon Flower, there are at least two poutine shops: Smoke's Poutinerie and Poutini's. This sign points to the latter.

Also nearby: the erstwhile Belle's Appliances now houses a dojo in a building that will soon be sold and, like many of its neighbours, redeveloped into something much more higher-rent.

Photographer A.J. Messier said that shooting from that angle gave a nice compositional effect to his photo and allowed him to capture the phone number on the sign advertising giclée printing at very competitive rates.

The owners of the Lens Factory were doubtless glad that the smashed-in window was at their recently-abandoned old location.

The Liquor Control Board of Ontario runs the province's retail liquor stores.

Someone is perhaps mistaken in his or her belief that using three E's in "please" is legally binding.

Maybe the government should run the militaries of America's enemies.

2010-04-18T09:42:00.000-07:00

Tea Party person Richard Harris (not the actor), articulates his movement's wet dream in an article in the New York Times: "Government should do the military and the roads and just about nothing else. They foul everything up if they do."

In other words, he wants an organization that he thinks is too incompetent or inefficient to do something like deliver a letter to be in charge of defending the country.

That's not "Tea Party," that's "Peter Principle."

It's too stupid to fail.

Another Pleasant Valley Sunday.

2010-04-11T20:27:00.000-07:00

I went for a stroll today to take some photographs and came home four hours, eight miles and 130 shots later. These are a few frames from my walk along the Wheeling Creek portion of the Greater Wheeling Trail, runs southeast along Wheeling Creek, where both the creek and the trail parallel to I-70 through town, and along National Road. Click on any picture to launch a larger version of the image in a new browser window or tab.

The trees and grasses on the flood plain between the creek and trail are in full bloom at this time of year. The green shoot rose vertically from a trunk growing in several different directions, and the yellow flower blossomed along the hill below I-470.

Wheeling Creek cuts through the limestone that underlies much of West Virginia. The rocks in and along the creek are made up of layers of sediment.

Graffiti appears on signs and billboard towers along the trail.

Further along the creek, a man catches a fish near a bridge under Route 88.

On National Road through the Elm Grove neighbourhood, someone bought billboard space to beg for President Obama's help against the "corrupt" movers and shakers in Wheeling. (This person has a much larger and more detailed version of his complaint on a billboard downtown.)

On an abandoned garage, a "Wacko" tag.

The Grove Terrace Motel has a simple sign visible from the Interstate. I've also heard that inside the motel, it's sad and rundown.

The eastern junction of Interstates 70 and 470 is overhead.

Farther along National Road, a retirement home's new cottages for some of its residents look like they were designed by the same architect who worked on the tv show The Prisoner.

The house at 1343 National Road was built in 1902 by William L. Glessner, President of the Laughlin Nail Company.

At the corner of Washington Avenue and National Road, a spider hung in the air on nearly-invisible threads.

Yonge Street Shopping List: Sushi, Tylenol, Lipgloss, Tampons and Condoms.

2010-04-03T13:33:00.000-07:00

Click on photo to launch large version (1024x506) in another window.

The Art Of The Deal.

2010-03-25T13:46:00.000-07:00

One in a series of essays about how to successfully negotiate anything. Or not.

I walked into the only pawn shop in my town and went to the back where they have their musical instruments (four no-name brand Strat copies, a violin, two basses and a 40-watt guitar amplifier).

"Can you do anything about the price of this bass?" I asked one of the staff, opening the door to negotiation.

But she had been raised in a house where her dad yelled at her to shut the door.

"No, the owner isn't here and we can't change prices," she said, unapologetically. "You could ask him" - she pointed to someone behind the counter - "but he'll probably tell you the same thing."

I did, and he did.

"This has been here quite a while," I observed. The little yellow sticker on it showed that it arrived eight months earlier. "And it's kind of beat up," I said. A previous owner had plastered stickers all over it, there were a couple of dings in the paint and it was missing a control knob.

"Yeah," said the man behind the counter. "But it's an Ibanez."

I put the bass back on its stand. I'd have felt guilty paying the price they wanted and depriving the pawn shop of the cachet of having an Ibanez in stock.

I thought I'd shredded everything.

2010-03-08T07:40:00.000-08:00

I dreamed about work today. That's not unusual - people dream about their jobs all the time - but what was odd was that I haven't had a job in thirteen months. I'll leave it to the experts to figure out why I suddenly manufactured a conversation with my old manager; I just want to tell you about the dream.

I was on some kind of cross-country road trip with about half a dozen people. We were all jammed into a too-small car - a two-door, four-seat, underpowered, non-airconditioned and weak-springed thing like a Neon or a Cavalier.

Our driver stopped for a bathroom break at a shopping mall somewhere. He parked the car out in some remote corner of the lot, a hundred yards from the nearest car or the nearest entrance to the mall. Everyone took turns going in to do their business; the rest of us remained in the car, crammed uncomfortably in the seats. (I don't know why we were too stupid to get out and stretch our legs - who knows why we do what we do in our dreams?)

The last person came back and got into the car; that was when I decided I needed to go to the bathroom. I squeezed out of the back seat - imagine the sardine in the corner of the tin farthest from the opening trying to extricate itself: that's what it was like.

I stood on the pavement, rearranged my clothing which had twisted itself into knots around me, and started across the pavement towards the mall doors.

My cell phone rang. I fished it out of my pocket.

"This is B____."

"Hi, B____. It's Steve G_______," said Steve G_______, who, even until the day he fired me, always used his first and last name when calling me, just in case I wouldn't recognize my manager's voice after talking to him daily for two years. "How are you?"

"Hi, Steve." I was confused. Why would Steve call me 13 months after he fired me? "I'm fine. What can I do for you?"

"Your desk," he said.

"My desk?"

"Where did you get the packets?"

My desk? Packets? What the hell was he talking about?

"There were packets in your desk," he said. "Ketchup, soy sauce, salad dressing. Where did you get them?"

"Excuse me?"

"Those packets of condiments in your desk," he said. "Where did you get them?"

"What?" I asked. Some of those packets would be two or three years old by now, and he wanted me to tell him where I'd got them?

"Jason ate the salad dressing in one of them," Steve said, "and he got sick, so I'd like to know where you got them."

In my dream, Jason was a new hire and my replacement, and I suddenly remembered that there was a half-used packet of ranch dressing in my top-left desk drawer on the day I'd left. I'd folded over the top and closed it with a binder clip so it wouldn't leak. Newbie must have put half a packet of two-year-old salad dressing - that had been open and in a desk drawer for half of that time - on his greens. And now he was sick.

"Uh, geez, Steve," I said, "I don't remember."

I woke up before I had to lie to him again.

Make A Run For The Border.

2010-02-24T06:52:00.000-08:00

The Lovely Mrs. byoolin's trebuchet and I took a little trip to Canada earlier this week. We entered and left at the Peace Bridge border crossing between Buffalo, New York and Fort Erie, Ontario.

SCENE ONE - Entering Canada

CANADA CUSTOMS GUARD: What's the purpose of your visit?
ME: I have a job interview on Monday. And NBC's Olympic hockey coverage stinks.
CANADA CUSTOMS GUARD: [laughs, then looks at The Lovely Mrs. byoolin's trebuchet] You've been to Canada in the winter before, right?
SHE: Our honeymoon was in Ottawa one February.
CANADA CUSTOMS GUARD: They're just a whole different level of mental there. Have a nice day.

SCENE TWO - Entering the United States

US CUSTOMS GUARD: Why were you in Canada?
ME: I had a job interview.
US CUSTOMS GUARD: [gestures at my 'Green Card'] You know if you move there you have to give this back, right?
ME: Yes.
US CUSTOMS GUARD: Okay, then.

I Hope I Get The Job.

2010-02-20T11:09:00.000-08:00

I have a job interview on Monday. I just realized that I need the job, if only to be able to pay for the things associated with going to the interview:

Haircut:	$17
Shirt, new, white (16-1/2" neck, 32" sleeve):	$25
Oil change, tire rotation, brake job*:	$493
Gas to drive to & from interview**:	$70
Hotel room:	$95
Meals, tolls, etc., for two***:	$130
Catsitter:	$20

Total:	$850

Geez. It's a good thing I don't need a new suit, too.

* The car was overdue for an oil change and rotation. A sticking rear brake caliper also needed to be replaced, along with the rotor it shredded. Brake pads were replaced under warranty at no charge.
** The interview is in Toronto. It's about a 750-mile round trip. Our car, "Dirty Harry," gets about 30mpg. So 25 gallons of gas ought to get us there and back. If I buy gas in the US, I'll pay around $2.80/gallon, on average. Hence, $70.
***The Lovely Mrs. byoolin's trebuchet will accompany me.

Ask not what you can do for your country; ask what you can do to improve your President's speeches.

2010-02-12T17:22:00.000-08:00

See if you can spot the Lovely Mrs. byoolin's trebuchet's editing of President Kennedy's 1961 address to the Parliament of Canada:

Geography has made us neighbors. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners. The Internet has made us lovers. And necessity has made us allies.

No, look what YOU did.

2010-01-27T19:28:00.000-08:00

The Next Door Neighbour Guy is somewhat less than diligent in cleaning up the deposits that his big black Labrador Retriever named Bubba leaves in the yards on our street.

(Our landlady, initially confused as to whether NDNG's dog or Two Doors Down Guy's dog Kiwi was responsible, once posted a large sign in the yard: CLEAN UP AFTER YOUR PETS IMMEDIATELY. Not that it helped.)

I was standing on my front patio yesterday trying to remember where I'd put the shovel, when NDNG pulled up and he and Bubba got out of their truck. NDNG walked up to greet me and strode through our shared front yard to shake my hand. As he got to the edge of my patio, he planted his left foot in the middle of a heaping helping of Bubbaturd.

"Oh, Bubba," NDNG said, turning to his dog. "Look what you did."

He wiped off his shoe on the grass, excused himself and went inside.

And I need to find that shovel.

With a name like that, is it even a sport?

2010-01-24T17:30:00.000-08:00

The Lovely Mrs. byoolin's trebuchet asked me if I knew the internet meme that goes something like, "We [i.e., Canadians] will explain curling to you [i.e., Americans] when you explain the NRA to us."

She was taken aback that I had no idea what she was talking about. I frequently have no idea what she's talking about, but, bless her heart, the novelty does not seem to wear off.

She posited that the meme is flawed and that if it were hers to rewrite, she'd replace "the NRA" with "NASCAR." She provided a rational explanation, supporting documentation and, for all I know, may have hired McKinsey to consult on the issue.

Well, if it were mine to rewrite, I'd do it like this:

"We [i.e., Canadians] will NEVER explain curling to you [i.e., Americans]. We saw what happened with hockey: the FOX puck, obnoxious music between face-offs, advertising on the rink boards and a team in Phoenix Arifreakingzona, for crying out loud. If we explain curling, the next thing you know, there'll be cheerleaders on the edges of each sheet, Bud Lite logos on the rocks and the ESPN highlight reel will feature The Dirt Devil Sweep Of The Night."

Of course, this whole internet meme hinges on the absurd idea that there is anyone in America interested enough in curling to bother to ask someone to explain it. Can you imagine the pitch to the executives at FOX sports?

"It's got the strategy of chess and the patience of soccer, and it's on ice!"

Let's save some hate for Guam, people.

2010-01-05T21:35:00.000-08:00

In Chambers County, Texas, three Puerto Rican men are in custody, charged with stabbing to death a man who had let them stay in his trailer.

Horrific crimes like this almost inevitably lead to a show of force from the peanut-brain gallery.

Searcher61 wrote:

No reverence or value on human life. See what you want, TAKE it! "American Dream," INDEED! OUR American Dream is to DEPORT those who come here illegally to take advantage of OUR hard work, and to ELIMINATE those who come here illegally to take advantage of us AND kill us when we try to help them!...

lea1 wrote:

How long will will let these people come to our country? seems when they said where they were from "Devillier" would have asked about their legal status in our country... coming to our country for the illegals means food stamps,free medical care, and rights that we as americans do not have. It also means they can rob and kill and then move on.

sk134 wrote:

This is one reason why law officers should be able to ask the simple question :Are you here legally? If he could have asked, perhaps a man would be alive today.

Danzmark wrote:

Time to throw ALL these illegals out ! The American Dream doesn't include the rest of the Americans letting these parasites sneak in.

But my favourite comment comes early in the stream of invective, from the 10th person to comment.

Bear1949 wrote:

ILLEGAL ALIENS doing what they do best, KILLING AMERICAN citizens.

That's my favourite comment because only 13 minutes earlier, the very first commenter made a bold prediction.

CheeryEyed wrote:

I despise Puerto Ricans for whining that they can't be a state nor can they be independent. That said, I'm waiting for the idiots to call these goons illegals.

What CheeryEyed is hinting at, of course, is that Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory of the United States and - since 1917 - people born in Puerto Rico are American citizens.

The peanut-brain gallery speaks.

2010-01-03T17:15:00.000-08:00

In Decatur, Georgia, a 4-year-old boy was killed by a bullet from celebratory gunfire while attending a New Year’s Eve church service. The bullet is believed to have come from a weapon fired into the air before it pierced the church roof and struck the boy in the head.

We can be grateful to one of the website's commentators for immediately identifying the salient issue:

What is the church roof made of...Saran Wrap? Once the bullet makes its way down towards earth and hits the roof, there should be enough friction force on the bullet to slow it down before it completely exits the roof material.

Jan. 1, 2010 7:50pm EST | from trizone

"Join The Discussion." (But try not to get too much spit on your monitor.)

2010-01-02T20:32:00.000-08:00

Adapted from a letter I sent to the editor of The Globe And Mail earlier this week.

It's time for news organizations' websites to discontinue the practice of offering their readers the opportunity to comment on the stories they publish.

Billed as a way for a site's readers to share their thoughts, in reality the commenters rarely contribute anything thoughtful or worthwhile. Rather, the comments are frequently puerile, juvenile, inane and banal, and all too often they are simply hateful, vulgar, and offensive. Today's exemplar: theglobeandmail.com, the website of The Globe And Mail newspaper, "a blue-chip brand whose credibility is unchallenged... [and] universally recognized as Canada's newspaper of record."

Last Tuesday in Ottawa, a police constable named Eric Czapnik was stabbed to death as he did paperwork in his cruiser. A few hours later, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer on leave because of mental health issues was charged with his homicide. The comments section of the Globe And Mail's story provided a disturbing insight into how the feature has devolved. By 10pm that night, 28 of the 218 comments posted were deleted by The Globe's editors for content "not consistent with [The Globe's] guidelines." Many of those that remained were little more than malice-filled expressions of the commenters' personal biases.

Two commenters agree - before an arrest is announced - that the suspect "was either on probation, parole, or bail... AND he was unemployed and contributing nothing to society." Another speculates later that the suspect "wanted to die 'death by cop' style" but "didn't have guts" to kill himself. Yet another seems to imply that Const. Czapnik's murder and the death of Robert Dziekanski in 2007 is part of some kind of RCMP-organized attack on Poles; that writer might be on the same page as the one who believes that RCMP officers have "been given a blank cheque to cover up all their past murders." And there's no shortage of commenters calling one another "idiot" or "mental midget."

This sort of thing isn't isolated. Pick an online story at random and you're almost guaranteed to find something: airport delays? Let's call Muslims terrorists. Fired at age 42 for being too old? Let's make a crack about global warming. Unemployed at 59? Let's mock you because you were in a union. Gym memberships? "This is the most insipid drivel I have ever had the misfortune to read."

The Globe And Mail invites its readers to "Join The Discussion," but these people are uninterested in discussing anything. They just want another forum for their bilious, vitriolic, racist hatemongering. And websites like The Globe And Mail seem to be happy to give them one.

Rejected Additional Airline Security Measures.

2009-12-28T12:44:00.000-08:00

From an unreleased Transportation Security Administration (TSA) document outlining additional security measures to be implemented in the wake of the failed Christmas Day attack on Delta Airlines flight 253.

10: No carry-on luggage will be allowed - checked baggage only. In addition, passengers to disrobe, pack clothes in baggage and fly nude.

9: Baggage described in item 10 to be flown to destination via different flight, and preferably on a different airline.

8: Potential passengers will be required to recite Pledge of Allegiance prior to boarding. Those unable to do so to the satisfaction of the TSA will not be boarded.

7: Seating will be assigned in the following order: Christian Americans will be seated first. Non-Christian Americans may be seated second, upon successful completion of additional screening procedures, including, but not limited to, recitation of a Bible passage to be selected by TSA personnel in their sole discretion. Non-American passengers will not be boarded under any circumstances.

6: Potential passengers observed, heard, or rumored to be complaining during screening process will not be boarded.

5: Passengers will remain seated, with seatbelts fastened, during final hour of flight. For the purposes of security, it is assumed that an attack on the aircraft is imminent, that the aircraft will be destroyed, and that the aircraft is therefore in its "final hour of flight." As a result, passengers will remain seated, with seatbelts fastened, for the entire duration of the flight.

4: On-board televisions will be turned off. In addition, passengers will be prohibited from using any electronic devices, including, but not limited to, computers, cell phones, Blackberries, hand-held gaming devices, radios, televisions, cameras, music players, and any other device whatsoever, whether hand-held or not, and whether electronic or not.

3: Passengers will face forward and refrain from speaking during the final hour of flight (see item 5).

2: Passengers may not blink, twitch, shift, move, sigh, moan, mumble, nod, speak, sing nor hum during the final hour of flight (see item 5).

1: Effective immediately, 95 of every 100 passengers will be deputized as a Federal Air Marshal. To encourage volunteers for this program, potential Air Marshals will be exempt from screening procedures 2 through 10.

Ring-billed Gull.

2009-12-28T06:26:00.000-08:00

Click here for a larger version (1024x680) in a new window.

A Ring-billed Gull (Larus delawarensis), photographed in Cleveland, Ohio. Nikon D40 with 100-300mm D lens at 300mm, ISO1600, 1/1000 sec exposure at f6.7.

Gobble, gobble.

2009-12-26T16:50:00.000-08:00

Like most of the other 60 billion pounds of people in America, we treat ourselves to a proper gorgement every Christmas. After all, it's only appropriate that our profligate spending be reflected in our dining habits. Otherwise, the whole Orgy Of Holiday Seasonal Activities would seem unbalanced. In for a penny, in for a pound, as they say, then multiply that by the exponentially-increasing number of pennies and pounds.

So it comes to pass that on Christmas night, the three of us - me, The Lovely Mrs. byoolin's trebuchet, and She Who Will Put Us In A Home (formerly known as The Kid) - sit down to a dinner that can't be beat. (Not only can it not be beat, it's never even been tied, and we've frankly given up any hope of even being considered to be in the same league. But I digress.)

There's always turkey and stuffing and gravy and sweet potatoes and some kind of other vegetable and there's usually mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce and Yorkshire pudding or homemade bread.

And when we have Christmas at home, there's just the three of us, so there's always leftovers. There's only so much of a ten- or twelve- or fifteen-pound turkey and its accompaniments that three people can eat at one sitting. While I can take some small comfort knowing that evolution will probably provide our distant descendants with (a) accordion-like stomachs which expand to accommodate enormous holiday meals or (b) fewer nerve endings between the ribs and pelvis to leave them blissfully unaware of their distension, it doesn't help our present situation. For that, we undo our belts, push away from the table and await dessert.

[Permit me another digression: having read the previous four paragraphs, I can't say I am surprised that people in the Third World might hate us.]

Anyway, as I was saying, there's only so much we can finish off at the first go. Leftovers abound. There are usually big bowls of stuffing, of gravy, of starchy tubers, and somewhere between sixty and eighty percent of an uneaten turkey left behind. Into the fridge and freezer they all go, to be picked over for the next two or three weeks, to be made into sandwiches and chili and hash browns and expanded midriffs.

But I've always thrown away the carcass of the bird and (usually) within hours remembered that I'd wanted to use it to make soup. Then I'd spend a little time cursing myself for forgetting and a little time cursing my family for wanting nothing to do with retrieved-from-the-garbage turkey soup.

This year, though, I remembered my soup plan before pitching the bird and saved the carcass. And today I made my first-ever turkey soup. I found a recipe at Allrecipes.com for After-Thanksgiving Turkey Soup (I know), secured the necessary ingredients (encountering as I did so an unprecedented shortage of half-and-half in the city's grocery and convenience stores which nearly forced me to use pumpkin spice flavoured coffee whitener in its stead) and set to work.

I tweaked the recipe a bit - less butter (I mean, who really needs a cup of it?), more of just about everything else to accommodate the extra broth I ended up with, and a couple of hours later, ta-da! Turkey soup. And pretty tasty, too.

But here's the thing: now, in addition to the big bowls of stuffing and gravy and eight pounds of leftover turkey, I've got six quarts of soup. It's really good, but it's six quarts.

So when New Year's Day comes and She Who Will Put Us In A Home begins 2010 as a vegetarian, I'll merely be in Week Two of The Year Of Eating Leftover Turkey-Based Products.

Careful With That Axe, Eugene.

2009-12-12T19:15:00.000-08:00

I'm still certain that the Lovely Mrs. byoolin's trebuchet has no idea what she's in for, but she wanted - heck, she insisted - that my Christmas present this year be a guitar.

An electric guitar.

She said, "I want to hear you play again." Before I met her, I owned a couple of electric guitars, but by the time we met, they were both gone and in their places I had a pair of acoustic guitars - a six-string Harmony and a twelve-string Takamine that was a gift from a previous girlfriend.

I seldom played the twelve-string; it was hard (for me) to play and hard (for me) to keep in tune. We sold it one month when we were short of cash. I felt little regret at letting it go, figuring that it would be better off in the hands of someone who knew what he or she was doing with it.

The six-string was easier to play, but when I moved from Canada to the US I left it behind, accidentally on purpose, in the old apartment. In hindsight, maybe I shouldn't have done that, but it made sense at the time. But here we are now, seven years removed from the last time she heard me play a guitar, long enough for the memories of buzzy strings, missed notes, atonal chords and (inevitably) the same bits played again and again and again to fade from her memory, leaving only the sweetly romanticized notion of me playing an instrument.

So I said "No, thanks."

That was my first mistake. You don't say no to the Lovely Mrs. byoolin's trebuchet. (Well, maybe you say no to her, but I sure don't.) So, after a few days, I carefully considered the error of my ways and said, "Let's go look at guitars."

Now it's five days later and I'm the proud daddy of a Squier Deluxe Stratocaster and a Vox Pathfinder 10 practice amp.

And you should see the look on the cats' faces when I turn up the gain.

When Santa Drinks.

2009-11-22T09:01:00.000-08:00

One year sometime in the early '90s I did some cartoons in MS Paint to amuse my coworkers as Christmas approached. The cartoons have been unseen for years. For a while I'd had them posted on Geocities but it was one of those free disappearing sites that blinked out of existence without warning, (as distinct from the other Geocities sites, which blinked out of existence in October after Yahoo! decided its free crappy websites weren't worth the trouble). Luckily for me - and now for you - the cartoons were saved on our home PC, where they've been trapped since about 2001 - that computer had no CD burner and its replacement, and its replacement, and then that machine's two replacements didn't have floppy drives.

It only occurred to me a few days ago that I might be able to create a small network to connect that old computer to one of our new ones. (Yes, I am also the kind of guy who much later has brilliant comebacks to people's remarks. My rejoinders last week to that guy who made fun of my hair would have shut him up but good, had he not died years ago.) But I digress: my point is that the network worked, the files were transferred, and my cartoons live again.

So, Ladies and Gentlemen, without further ado, I give you When Santa Drinks.

But Christmas isn't just about giving, it's about getting and it's about selling. In keeping with that True Spirit Of Christmas, if you want to get some When Santa Drinks Christmas cards, I will be delighted to sell some When Santa Drinks Christmas cards to you.

So, just for people like you and me and everybody, When Santa Drinks Christmas cards are now on sale at Zazzle! Surely you have a hundred friends you need to send cards to this year! Buy now! Buy often! Buy too many!

Maybe he meant, "there's lots of seasonS left."

2009-11-19T20:35:00.001-08:00

Toronto Maple Leafs defenceman Luke Schenn told a reporter the other day that the team wasn't happy with its performance.

"We didn't want to start this way," he said, "but there's lots of season left."

So say what you will about the Leafs, but they don't know the meaning of the word "quit," and they certainly don't know how to read a schedule.

Twenty of their season's 82 games have been played and the Leafs have won three of them. At the rate they're going now, they'll be lucky to finish with a dozen wins. (For you non-hockey-fans who may be asking yourself if that's good, ten of the other 29 teams in the league already have 12 or more wins this season, so, no, that's not very good at all.)

Here's how bad the Leafs are: if they were to set for themselves what other teams might consider the modest goal of winning half of their games this season (a goal, incidentally, that 14 of the other 29 teams in the NHL are currently meeting or exceeding), they would have to win 38 of their next 61 games. That's a .623 winning percentage for the rest of the season.

"Surely that's doable, right?" asks the theoretically representative die-hard Toronto fan. Don't bet on it: the last time they did put up numbers like that was in the 2003-2004 season, and the last time before that was in 1961. In fact, they've only ever managed it six times since 1927.

So, anyway, Luke: there's always next season, right?

The fine art of the sales pitch.

2009-11-02T14:34:00.000-08:00

In today's mail, a come-on from Vonage: "As a valued former Vonage customer, we have a special limited-time offer just for you: Come Back to Vonage and get" - and then, in big orange letters that got even bigger and oranger as the sentence concluded - offered me exactly the same price as I had been paying before I cancelled the service. Or, to put it another way, twice as much as the rate they offered me two months ago when I called them to cancel.

It's a bold strategy - if at first the customer doesn't go for the lower price, try raising it back to the original price - convince them that not only were they wrong to stop buying it then, their refusal was an insult. An insult! Hell, why not double the price and teach those impertinent peons a lesson?

I'm holding out until Vonage asks for $200 a month, a kidney and the right to crush my testicles on demand. You know, just like my cell phone company.

We're gonna need a bigger Gitmo.

2009-11-01T05:01:00.000-08:00

An article by Walter Pincus in The Washington Post says that the FBI told the Senate Judiciary Committee in September that its terrorist watch list contains over four hundred thousand "unique names".

They say "anti-terrorism," I say "paranoid much?"

They're adding about 1,600 names a day to the list, for crying out loud. (For comparison, an FBI agent who served on a CIA–FBI task force hunting bin Laden has said that al Qaeda's membership list in 2001 contained 198 names.)

Four hundred thousand potential terrorists in the USA? Come on. You're telling me that America has twice as many potential terrorists as it does Army Reservists?

If there were 400,000 potential terrorists within the United States, you wouldn't be able to find diesel fuel or fertilizer anywhere.

If there were 400,000 potential terrorists within the United States, there would be explosions in airplanes, subways, shopping malls, airports and football stadiums every day of the week.

If there were 400,000 potential terrorists within the United States, they'd have a company health plan, a 401-K, some sort of employee day care program, and, most importantly, at least one employee stupid enough to blog about what they were up to.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll just go hide in my basement. Wouldn't want the terrorists to get me.

Empty Buildings.

2009-10-23T18:10:00.000-07:00

At the top of Wheeling Hill, near the plaque commemorating McCulloch's leap and the statue erected by the Kiwanis Club to commemorate the Indians who once lived here - the same Indians who were killed or defeated and driven from the Ohio Valley by military men like McCulloch - there is a small stand of buildings.

The Old Windmill Pub has been empty for a few years and the property is for sale. Four or five houses sit next to it. Some have boarded-up windows and are vacant; the others look rundown and tired. They all face a row of garages that have all but collapsed off their pillar foundations and tumbled down the hill on which they're built.

The Old Windmill Pub. Click on image to launch larger version in new window.

The Old Windmill Pub. Click on image to launch larger version in new window.

Abandoned garages on Wheeling Hill. Click on image to launch larger version in new window.

Inside an abandoned garage on Wheeling Hill. Click on image to launch larger version in new window.

Peeling paint on a dresser. Click on image to launch larger version in new window.

What you might find in a dyslexic nephrologist's office.

2009-09-18T18:24:00.000-07:00

The Band With Nearly As Many Names As Members

2009-09-17T16:03:00.000-07:00

We saw an excellent show in Pittsburgh's Club Cafe last night, billed as "An Evening With The Minus 5, The Baseball Project and The Steve Wynn IV," which was really just a bit of crafty misdirection inasmuch as the same four people comprised all three bands, making it just about impossible to tell which group was playing which song.

(Readers who require a more rigid structure may wish to imagine that The Minus 5 opened, playing an energetic and muscular set during which Scott McCaughey and Steve Wynn's guitars provided churning, roaring, jangling melodies on top of bassist Peter Buck's steady hand on a vintage-style Eastwood Airline Map bass, throbbing along with Linda Pitmon's thundering and rock-steady drumbeat. The Minus 5 were followed by The Baseball Project, featuring Scott McCaughey and Steve Wynn singing about baseball legends like Fernando Valenzuela, Satchel Paige and Harvey Haddix while their guitars provided churning, roaring, jangling melodies on top of bassist Peter Buck's steady hand on a vintage-style Eastwood Airline Map bass, throbbing along with Linda Pitmon's thundering and rock-steady drumbeat. The Steve Wynn IV showed its versatility in the second set, with the bandleader supplementing fiery licks and crunching chords on his Fender Jazzmaster with howling harmonica work, while Buck took turns playing rhythm guitar on a blue and white Rickenbacker twelve-string as McCaughey took over the role of the Airline pilot's with the steady hand on a vintage-style Eastwood Airline Map bass, throbbing along with Linda Pitmon's thundering and rock-steady drumbeat.)

Peter Buck and Scott McCaughey.

But no matter which band was playing, they were killing, their chops were great, and that they were having fun was obvious, as was the crowd in the Club Cafe. They played nearly forty songs during their three-plus hours on the stage, including a version of Neil Young's "Revolution Blues," a track on the band's sold-only-at-gigs Butcher Covered disc.

Steve Wynn.

Between the first and second sets, the band members signed autographs, chatted with fans, posed for pictures and sold a little merchandise. (Peter Buck was an especially convincing salesperson - if the whole rock'n'roll thing doen't work out for him, he might have a future on QVC.)

And have I mentioned that Scott McCaughey and Steve Wynn's guitars provided churning, roaring, jangling melodies on top of bassist Peter Buck's steady hand on a vintage-style Eastwood Airline Map bass, throbbing along with Linda Pitmon's thundering and rock-steady drumbeat?

Linda Pitmon.

Now, if only they could pick one band name and stick with it.

The Fine Art Of The Apology.

2009-09-13T13:40:00.000-07:00

Joanne Brazel-Wheatcroft, mentioned in an earlier post for describing Joe Wilson, the candidate for Superior Court Judge in Washington, as a "BIGOT" and an exemplar of "what assholes the republicans are," has finally apologized for erroneously directing her invective at Mr. Wilson. She had, of course, meant to call the Joe Wilson who is the Republican member of Congress those names.

It turns out to have been an easy mistake to make, for, as Ms. Brazel-Wheatcroft notes in her apology, "I saw two old men on facebook and assumed they were the same person."

Joe Wilson, the candidate, is 49 years old. Joe Wilson, the congressman, is 62.

Ms. Brazel-Wheatcroft's shoe size is 6, and her favourite flavour is Manolo Blahnik.

Tom Hank's volleyball from that movie has been getting hate mail, too.

2009-09-12T12:30:00.000-07:00

byoolin's law: Statistically speaking, your neighbour is just fuckin' stupid.

The other night, the President of the United States said that "what we have also seen in these last months is the same partisan spectacle that only hardens the disdain many Americans have toward their own government.... unyielding ideological camps... an opportunity to score short-term political points... [and] confusion has reigned."

Tell that to Joe Wilson. He's got people logging onto his Facebook page to tear him a new one, calling him a bigot, blaming him for "the mess we are in," comparing him - unflatteringly - to Rush Limbaugh and the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, or accusing him of having "no class what so ever." The occasional poster thanks him for his "courage" or "for speaking the truth and for [his] public and military service."

But - and this is a big but - the odds are pretty good that those people meant to excoriate (or praise) Joe Wilson (R - SC), the Congressman who yelled, "You lie!" during the President's speech to Congress on Wednesday, and not the lawyer from Snohomish County, Washington who is running for Superior Court Judge.

Now poor Joe Wilson is left with a Facebook page that's been hijacked by people like Joanne Brazel-Wheatcroft, who call him "BIGOT!" and say that he's "proved... what assholes the republicans are." When her error is pointed out to her by a conservative poster, she attacks his "grammer" and notes that "I did manage to find "the" Joe Wilson after I realized my mistake. I am not a republican, so I can admit I made a mistake, but I have corrected it!"

Since Ms. Brazel-Wheatcroft has not, as of this writing, apologized to the candidate Wilson, one might reasonably infer that correcting her mistake means that she's since redirected her sentiments to the congressman Wilson.

Click on the image or here to launch a larger version in another window.

Let's hear it for the electorate!

If, Then, Else. Or not.

2009-09-10T21:08:00.000-07:00

For a couple of weeks now, ~~The Kid~~ She Who Will Put Us In A Home has been crossing her fingers every time she tried to use her cell phone. The phone's been on its last legs for a while, a victim of its own success. She Who Will Put Us In A Home uses it like FOX 'News' uses the phrase "Death Panels." The paint is gone from half a dozen letters on QWERTY keypad and from two or three buttons on the phone's face, the slider is showing signs of metal fatigue like you'd see on the wings of a 747 after a barrel roll and its battery holds a charge about as well as a very large man with very buttery fingers holds a very tiny screw.

The phone finally died yesterday evening.

Anticipating this, I'd sent She Who Will Put Us In A Home an email the other day listing a few of the better-rated phones available under our carrier's (Rhymes With Bint) plan and told her she could pick one and I'd order it.

I logged on to my carrier's website to place the order. When I got to the checkout page, there wasn't an option to change the shipping address. She Who Will Put Us In A Home is in college now (he said, beaming with pride) and it only makes perfect sense to ship it to where she is, rather than have Rhymes With Bint ship it here and have me ship it there. (Have I mentioned that her phone no longer works?)

I clicked on the button to talk to a live customer service person. Jessica immediately sprang to life in a pop-up window. The pertinent portions of our conversation are transcribed below (Rhymes With Bint helpfully includes an "email a transcript" button with its live chats).

JESSICA: Thank you for visiting Rhymes With Bint. What questions can I answer for you today?

ME: I am ordering a phone to replace the one my daughter is using. I would like to have it shipped directly to her at college but I do not seem to have that option. Am I able to ship to an address other than my home?

JESSICA: You will have the option 'shipping at different address' on the Final Checkout page. Do you see 'Shipping at different address' option on your current page?

ME: No, that's not an option.

[JESSICA asks me whether or not I can see a number of other things on the page, all of which I can. Then she asks me what the 'total charges' are and which phone I ordered.]

JESSICA: To confirm your eligibility for an upgrade, may I please have your billing ZIP code and the telephone number of the device you would like to upgrade? If you would like to check your upgrade eligibility status in the future, you can visit www.Rhymes With Bint.com/upgrades.

ME: I already know I'm eligible... zip is XXXXX. Number being upgraded is xxx-xxx-xxxx. My login page tells me that that number is eligible for upgrade.

JESSICA: You are eligible to receive a $25 instant rebate with a one-year contract extension and a $75 instant rebate with a two-year contract extension. When you upgrade your device online today, we will waive the $18 upgrade fee as well as the shipping and handling charges.

ME: Yes, I know that. And that's all in the billing details. But my problem is that I want to ship the phone to my daughter at college. How do I change the shipping address? *That* is the question.

JESSICA: As you don't find the option 'shipping at different address' on your Final checkout page, you cannot get it shipped at your desired address.

JESSICA: Is there anything else I can help you with today?

"Anything else"?

In retrospect, I think I may have missed an opportunity to ask them if they could also not do some other thing they already don't do, if only to have them tell me again about something I already know.

The Short, Happy Life of Greener The Tobacco Hornworm

2009-09-10T07:17:00.000-07:00

I was standing on the sidewalk in front of my townhouse one Friday afternoon when The Neighbour Kid suddenly asked, "What's that?"

She was pointing at a caterpillar that was as big as the finger she was pointing with. It was bright green, striped, and had a quarter-inch-long curved red hook at one end. It stood motionless on a stalk of one of my cherry tomato plants.

I told her that I didn't know what it was and went inside to get my camera. I grabbed a little plastic storage tub at the same time. I wasn't going to let the caterpillar eat my tomatoes, but it was a beast too fascinating to squash, so I decided to make it my guest for a while. The Neighbour Kid said she might like to take it to school on Monday, if I could figure out what it was.

It was a tobacco hornworm - Manduca sexta, more formally, and Greener, somewhat less so.

Greener and his cousins, the tomato hornworms, eat things like tobacco and tomato plants. They've evolved ways of neutralizing the toxins in tobacco plants - like nicotine - while still being able to enjoy that cool menthol taste.

They're voracious eaters - on Sunday afternoon I watched Greener chew up a section of leaf the size of a quarter in about two minutes - that devour your plants and grow quickly before turning into Carolina Sphinx moths. I was looking forward to seeing it.

A few hours later, I knew that wasn't going to happen. At about 7:30 I noticed a single white nodule, no larger than a grain of rice, on Greener's back. It was a braconid wasp larva.

Braconidae are a natural control for hornworms: adult wasps lay their eggs in the hornworm between molts, and the wasp larvae grow inside the hornworm for a couple of weeks; all the while the hornworm goes about his usual business - which is to say, eating my tomatoes. Then, at the end of the two weeks, the larvae emerge through the hornworm's skin.

In the time it took me to look up that information online - about twenty minutes - Greener went from having one larva on his back to having eighteen.

Within half an hour, he had more than fifty larvae on him, each one slowly rotating at its unattached end as it spun a coccoon.

By Monday morning, Greener's rear end was covered in coccoons. By Monday evening, The Neighbour Kid was not so interested in taking Greener to school.

Once the larvae emerged and spun their coccoons, not much happened that anyone could see. The coccoons got darker as the pupae developed. Greener eventually stopped eating and a week after the first larva popped through the skin, Greener was dead and the little plastic tub was filled with several dozen braconid wasps. They're tiny - only about an eighth of an inch long - and look like blackflies to the naked eye. Under magnification, though, they look every bit like a wasp.

The wasps themselves live for about two weeks. Each female will lay eggs in as many as 200 hornworms during that time. Greener's friends are in deep doo-doo.

Mack Maxidyne, near Triadelphia, West Virginia

2009-08-26T09:26:00.000-07:00

Spined Micrathena

2009-08-19T19:09:00.000-07:00

The spined micrathena (micrathena gracilis), or spined orb-weaver, builds a new web every day and takes it down every night, writes Jeffrey K. Barnes of The University of Arkansas Arthropod Museum: "At dusk, the female ingests virtually every strand of the web except frame threads, on which she remains until morning. She rebuilds the orb at dawn."

This one was just a few feet from my front door.

Full-size version of this is here.

...so this would be a "miss."

2009-08-15T08:21:00.000-07:00

Storefront, Murray Avenue, Pittsburgh

Dr. Dean.

2009-08-14T20:58:00.000-07:00

Former Vermont Governor Dr. Howard Dean, at Joseph-Beth Books, Pittsburgh PA.

Top Ten Instantaneous Reactions To The Sentence "Octomom gets two-hour TV special":

2009-08-11T06:21:00.001-07:00

10: Is there a punctuation mark more interrobangy than the interrobang? Because a mere "WTF!?" just isn't going to suffice here.

9: I would rather watch my mom get an enema.

8: That's it, I'm moving back to Canada.

7: Just knowing that this is on another channel makes me feel like I'm wasting the $13 a month I spend on Basic Cable.

6: I'm pretty sure it's just going to be a rip-off of Part One of Monty Python's "The Meaning Of Life."

5: Well, if they get Scott Hamilton to co-host and call it "Disney's Clown Car Vagina On Ice" I'm sure it will do well.

4: Somewhere, a production assistant is wondering, "How is spending three weeks changing diapers on someone else's *@$&@$^^#% kids going to help MY career?!?"

3: [Four minutes of head-shaking vigorous enough to cause a contrecoup injury.]

2: Even if only Octomom and her kids watch it, the thing's going to be a ratings HIT!

1: It still can't be worse than that live Rosie O'Donnell thing.

Ten Most Infuriating Provisions Of The New Health Care Bill.

2009-08-05T15:43:00.000-07:00

10: In addition to free health care, Kenyans entitled to weekly massages.
9: Canadian-style hospitalization rules mandate Labatt Blue I.V. drip for all patients.
8: Tea-Party-related injuries not covered.
7: People of colour not required to sit in back of ER waiting areas.
6: Carrying of concealed firearms by anesthetized patients forbidden.
5: Before being euthanized, elderly patients to be used as test subjects for live organ transplants.
4: Mandatory recycling of bandages and sharing of casts.
3: As cost-saving measure, hospital gowns to be 3 inches shorter.
2: Surgical masks to feature advertising.
1: Poor people will have access to basic medical care.

One of these things is not like the other.

2009-08-04T12:26:00.000-07:00

"Well, you like that Ricky Gervais fella in the British version of The Office, and you were always talking about how funny he was in Extras, too, so naturally we thought you'd like this movie that didn't have Ricky Gervais in it and was about that airplane crash in the Andes where the survivors had to resort to cannibalism to stay alive."

(Full-size (484x398) image here.)

Another dissatisfied customer.

2009-08-04T04:48:00.000-07:00

Dear Apache Server,

I recently received from you the following error message:

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, xxxxxxx@xxxxxxxx.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Apache/1.3.41 Server at www.xxxxxxxxx.com Port 80

I've received similar messages before, as have several of my friends, but this is the first time I've felt compelled to write.

Frankly, the tone of your message is offensive. That little passive-aggressive dig in the second paragraph - that I tell the server administrator about "anything [I] might have done that may have caused the error" - suggests to me that you already know what's wrong, and it's me.

All I did was click on an internet link, just like I do hundreds of times a day without incident, but this time it brought me to a page with your error message. I was embarrassed and humiliated to be treated as though it were my fault. HUNDREDS of times a day I click on a link and it works. Why, on the rare occasion that it doesn't work, do you automatically assume it was something I've done?

Frankly, I can do without the kind of treatment I have received from you. I will no longer patronize your website and will advise my friends to do the same.

Sincerely,

[etc., etc.]

Something for @Bartlett'sFamiliarQuotations.

2009-07-31T14:41:00.000-07:00

Recently, I happened to refer to my followers on Twitter as "tweeple," which, for those of you who don't know, is what one calls Twitter people.

It turns out that my wife, the Lovely Mrs. byoolin's trebuchet, is one of those who didn't know that, and asked me, "Did you just make that up?"

"No," I said. "That word is as old as Twitter itself."

Idle Thought Occasioned By A Single Line On "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart."

2009-07-30T05:53:00.000-07:00

Jon Stewart quoted that old saw, "Nature abhors a vacuum." He repeated the word for emphasis: "ABHORS."

Then it occurred to me that the Universe, i.e., all of Nature, is mostly vacuum. Another old cliché debunked.

You're welcome.

Movie Review: "Orphan"

2009-07-29T18:33:00.000-07:00

"Orphan"

Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra
Starring Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard, Isabel Fuhrman, Aryana Engineer, Daniel Coleman and CCH Pounder (as the Poundee).

You know it's a bad movie when... you come out of it annoyed at the person who suggested seeing it.

...you take a pee break in the middle and wash your hands... TWICE.

...you step out to ask someone at the concession for the nutritional information for your bag of popcorn.

...you start composing a snotty letter to Roger Ebert during a lull in the scary music.

...you ask yourself, "How would Michael Bay have improved on this film?"

...the heroine's nipples are showing through her t-shirt and you think, "Nope. Too late."

...you realize you're missing a re-run of "I Survived A Japanese Game Show" on ABC.

[Please, feel free to suggest your own.]

Another small victory for the terrorists.

2009-07-29T12:52:00.000-07:00

Thousands of people were evacuated from a JPMorgan Chase office building in Columbus, Ohio on Tuesday after an employee spotted "a black, boxlike device with lights, wires and a timer in a first-floor conference room" and called authorities.

Employees were evacuated to the parking lot, where some were overcome by the day's heat and had to be treated by paramedics.

Later, Chase spokesman Jeff Lyttle explained to the Columbus Post-Dispatch what the terror device was: "It has lights on it and sits in front of you, and when you have two minutes left, it prompts you; and when you have one minute left, it prompts you."

And when it's just sitting there on a desk, it scares some people shitless.

On the bright side: no use of truncheons.

2009-07-28T09:40:00.000-07:00

In his Washington Post chat earlier today, Gene Weingarten opined that the Henry Louis Gates arrest and was less about race and more about "the casual arrogance of a police officer who expects compliance and has the power of arrest."

Another fine example: the Mobile, Alabama Press-Register reports that police got called to a department store because a man had been in the store's bathroom for an hour. When the cops couldn't get him to come out, they fired pepper spray under the door, pried it open and then tasered him. It was then that they found out he was deaf. And *then* they arrested him for disorderly conduct and held him for six hours until a magistrate refused to uphold the charges.

They dropped him off in his driveway.

From the Press-Register story: "'When he walked in, his shirt was ripped, and he was just in a daze.' his brother, Brodrick Love, said. 'When I went outside, they (the police) took off. They stamped on that pedal.'"

The story doesn't make it clear when the cops knew that in addition to being deaf, Antonio Love is mentally challenged, having the faculties of a ten-year-old.

A Mobile police department spokesperson told the Press-Register that "Use of the Taser and the pepper spray appear to be justified according to the department's policy."

What kind of "policy" says it's okay to taser and pepper spray an ill, deaf, mentally retarded person?

Birther Control.

2009-07-28T06:42:00.000-07:00

It strikes me as ironic that the very people so certain that Barack Obama is not fit to be President because he's not American are the very people you'd think would be most likely to understand his situation. The Birthers, as they're called, seem to be unanimous in their conviction that Barack Obama was not born in the United States, and they all seem to be Christians.

What does one have to do with the other?

Well, I don't know anybody who's ever seen Jesus Christ's original birth certificate, either. And the same people who dismiss Obama's birth anouncement recorded in The Honolulu Advertiser two weeks after the event and unearthed a couple of months ago seem to be somewhat more credulous about Jesus' birth anouncement, which recorded on scrolls written centuries after the event and unearthed several centuries after that.

These people who seem to think that Obama can't be President because, they think, he was really born in Kenya or Indonesia or Hawaii are the same people who are perfectly comfortable with the King of Kings being from Israel. Is there some kind of continuum where being a foreigner is acceptable for some jobs, then unacceptable, and then acceptable? Not exactly. In fact, it gets confusing in a hurry.

If Jesus were here today He'd be able to join the military, but he couldn't process your passport application. He could be a dogcatcher, but not the guy making you take off your shoes at the airport. He could be Secretary of State, but not the Vice President or the President, but He could be, apparently, the President's boss. (It might even be a requirement that the President report to a foreigner: most Americans say they wouldn't vote for an atheist. And the last President was pretty clear that he reported to Jesus, even if it seemed to many of us that it was really Dick Cheney.)

All I know is that the next time you people have an election, then for Christ's sake you'd better have your paperwork in order.

I probably should stop calling it "the local fishwrap." I wouldn't dream of wrapping fish in it.

2009-07-27T14:15:00.000-07:00

Like many other newspapers' websites, my town's local fishwrap, Wheeling's Intelligencer & News-Register, allows its readers to comment on many articles on its website. The site's Terms of Service say that the comment feature is “provided to give users an interesting and stimulating forum to express their opinions and share ideas and information.”

“It is a condition of your use of these Services,” say the Terms, that people don't, among other things, use “vulgar, profane, abusive, hateful or racist language or expressions” or make “attacks of a personal, racial or religious nature” or “post any material that is threatening, false, defamatory, misleading, fraudulent, unfair, and inaccurate... [or] is unreasonably harmful or offensive to any individual, community, association, business or group.”

It's a system that works, except when it doesn't, which is usually. You know that old saying that opinions are like assholes – everybody's got one? The News-Register's comments section seems to be on a single-minded quest to tip that balance. Now, a lot of news (and other) websites have comments sections that seem to be populated mostly by people who have checked their good manners at the door. But the News-Register's comments are different. The comments on nearly every story seem to rapidly and rabidly devolve into demonstrations of who can be the most puerile and juvenile. How juvenile, you ask?

Well, here's user “EllisWyatt” implying that “GymJones” is a homosexual voyeur in response to GymJones calling him gay and “a little whiny c-u-n-t” (the hyphens are there to defeat the Dirty Word Filter) during an interesting and stimulating discussion of some local steelworkers being recalled from layoffs.

Elsewhere, “AlexanderShulgin” adds a non-journalist's perspective to a story about poor weather during the local Jamboree In The Hills music festival: “Tit bit nipply,” he remarks, expanding upon his own earlier comment - “Let’s see some t i t i e s [sic]” - on another story about the Jamboree.

“WVUGator2” agrees with EllisWyatt that a fire at a local country club “is a classic example of Jewish Lighning [sic],” - arson as an implement of insurance fraud - in part because “we all know Moondog could not get his bike up Route 88.” Moondog, a bit of a local celebrity, is known for riding a bicycle that flies a very large flag. Were it not for the difficulty in riding that bike up the very steep hill, Moondog, an African-American, would seem to be high on WVUGator2's list of suspects.

On the healthcare issue, “conservsquatch” says GymJones is both incestuous and a pedophile: “Gymjones does his mother. He also still touches little boys,” while “Truthseeker” believes many of the commenters “enjoy kicking puppies and kittens.”

Commenting on another healthcare story, “Highland” postulated that “[President] Obama will shut down any hospital that refuses to perform abortions,” prompting “acousticportal” to riposte in customary fashion, “Highland...are you really that ignorant? f-n blind follower.”

When a nearby school board announced the appointment of a principal to a new position after allegations of harrassment had been made against him, EllisWyatt suggested that county voters were “morons,” prompting shastacooper to call him “truly, truly the VILLAGE IDIOT.” Then, when “All4One” lamented the lack of civility in the comments to that point, COACH1 seemed to imply that All4One was a corrupt crony of the former principal, which in turn prompted Honeybun to speculate that COACH1 “may have been getting some special favors from” said former principal.

So, the News-Register's comment pages are home to a pretty sad-sack bunch of intemperate, insulting, homophobic, vitriolic, foul-mouthed, xenophobic, intolerant, petty, vindictive, rude and libelous people, and the Wheeling Intelligencer & News-Register seems unable or unwilling to do anything about it. Maybe its editors just have a different definition of “an interesting and stimulating forum.”

byoolin's got a brand new trebuchet.

2009-07-26T21:39:00.000-07:00

I'm moving my stuff here from the old place. There will be a short period of adjustment as I attempt to figure out why the "import XML" function seems to be hanging.

Restez-vous tranquille.

In the meantime, please enjoy one of my recent photographs: Great White Egrets on a pier near Pawleys Island, South Carolina.

(Click on the image to launch a larger version in a new window.)