Blizza Blizza

Kim, you might be better than I am at Scrabble, but I’ll whip pWnz0r you in 5cr488|3 any day.

The Detroit Lions canned head coach Steve Mariucci today after getting 3/4 of the way through another dismal season.

Now if they could just dispose of Joey Blueskies and that incompetent GM Matt Millen, they might have a halfway decent team in five years.

Oh, and here’s hoping I don’t have to suffer through any more of those awful Ford/Mercury/Lincoln commercials. Sorry, Mooch, but acting’s not your thing either.

UPDATE: MSNBC, of all places, is running the best article I’ve seen yet on the disaster that is the Detroit Lions. It particularly takes Millen and the rest of the front office (including the Ford family) to task for figuring out various and sundry new and creative ways to keep an NFL team from doing anything notable (notwithstanding the NFL’s longest-ever road losing streak).

The local NBC affiliate has RSS news feeds, since they’re all the rage these days. In this morning’s update for the first time was this story:

Holiday shopping deals uncovered: We’ve found a way for you to get an advance notice of what products will be on sale Friday.

Yes, that’s last Friday.

Apparently one of those ways is not “read this Web site.” Great job, guys.

Those of you with a passing familiarity with post-World War II Germany may know that any sort of Nazi memorabilia is illegal there. This includes the viewing of such material on the Internet, apparently, and eBay, in their infinite wisdom, has decided to filter their auction items so as to avoid breaking the law in Germany.

Notwithstanding the utterly idiotic censorship policy they’ve put in place — swastikas are required to be covered up in any item photos, for instance, which makes it damn difficult to present a good photograph of any Nazi memorabilia — their means of filtering auction items is even more horribly retarded.

As an American, living in the United States, I cannot view any items that even so much as imply a relationship to the Nazis, not because such items are illegal here — they’re not — but because eBay’s servers filter on the Accept-Language header sent by the browser.

That’s right. Anyone who reads German (or French, incidentally) must, therefore, be living in Germany or France.

Because no one outside Germany or France has ever read a word of German or French in their entire lives, especially on the Internets.

The really sad part is the item in question is a book written by an American ex-POW, about American POWs in Stalag Luft III. It just happens to have a swastika on the cover, and some photos of uniformed German soldiers inside.

Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do.

Today’s Dumbass of the Day award is shared by the drivers of the five vehicles responsible for causing a 16-car, 10-person car-train crash in Chicago Wednesday evening. From the story (emphasis added):

[O]fficials said vehicles should not have been directly in the train’s path because a sign at the intersection warns drivers not to stop on the tracks.

A big, yellow sign. With big red flashing lights and those ANGRY ALL-CAPS SHOUTING LETTERS.

Get the hell out of my gene pool, you morons.

Red Forman Dumbass Rating:

We report, you decide.

(via Eric via IM)

And the award goes to…

The anonymous (so far) counterfeiters in Arizona who, when their photocopier jammed, sent it in for service with fake bills still in the machine.

Have fun getting something else jammed in prison, geniuses.

Red Forman Dumbass Rating:

(via Techdirt)

I didn’t read the message, but I really hope they’re talking about all the spare Hammonds and Wurlitzers sitting in a moldy corner of my basement. I need my heart, lungs, liver, etcetera. OK, I could probably do without one of my kidneys, and I’ve never really understood the point of a spleen.

So thanks for the reminder, Mr. Spammer. I hereby open a one-week bidding period for my spleen and appendix, with a minimum bid of $10,000 plus medical expenses for each organ.

Put your bid in the comments. Payment will be accepted via PayPal, Western Union money order, or gold bars. If you have a spare heart you’re not using, I might be convinced to work out a trade, but only if the heart came from someone under the age of 40 who was within five percent of ideal body weight and exercised regularly. First-born children will not be accepted as a form of payment, unless they happen to be attractive females between the ages of 18 and 30, in which case, let’s talk. Buyer is responsible for all transportation expenses, including one of those fancy little beer coolers full of dry ice for packing around the spleen. Unless of course you just want it in a jar of formaldehyde, in which case you need to provide your own formaldehyde. And your own jar.

But now I think I’m looking for a Bluetooth-enabled rear-view mirror for my car.

And still looking for a headset for when I’m not in the car, of course.

Also, I need one of these nifty programmable LED nametags to hang in my rear window for the guy who keeps tailgating me.

Holy crap. As announced earlier this evening, every single graduate of Kalamazoo Public Schools who has been a student for four years or more (i.e., went to a KPS high school for four years and graduated) will be provided a college scholarship to any public institution of higher learning in Michigan.

This is just HUGE.

Update: Check out The Kalamazoo Promise @ KPS.

Update2: The Detroit Free Press now has a story, and apparently this made the “Today” show on NBC this morning.

Boeing’s new 777-200LR is making its first passenger flight, which departed Hong Kong yesterday and is due to land at Heathrow in London later this morning after some 23 hours in the air.

I feel terribly sorry for any passengers that get stuck in a metal tube for 23 hours.

But, uh, I’d be happy to fly it. :) (As long as I have a real bed, that is.)

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is my distinct honour and privilege to introduce to you this evening a world-renowned bean researcher, whose patented Lo-Fart™ beans have spared the world countless instances of olfactory trauma:

Dr. Colin Leakey

In related news, bookies in Vegas are handicapping Mr. Leakey’s odds of winning next year’s Ig Nobel prize in Public Health at 3:1, making him the early favourite for the honour.

(via Dave Barry, of course)

From the New York Times:

All eight members up for re-election to the Pennsylvania school board that had been sued for introducing the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in biology class were swept out of office yesterday…of the 16 candidates the one with the fewest votes was Mr. Bonsell, the driving force behind the intelligent design policy.

Too bad the morons in Kansas weren’t up for re-election this year. Serves those goons in Pennsylvania right, though. Keep your religion out of my science class.

You just don’t know it. ;)

Camino 1.0b1 has been released, and the release notes document a huge list of changes. Amusingly, the top two “General” bugfixes are my work (as is one of the bookmarks fixes), which means two of the three “major changes” listed in the TUAW entry about the release are mine.

I definitely did NOT contribute anywhere near 2/3 of the work on this release. That credit goes to Mike Pinkerton and Simon Fraser, along with the rest of the Camino team and the other hobbyist developers who have contributed patches.

But, uh, thanks, Dave. :)

Starting late thanks to football.

2109: “The movie event of the season, coming up next!” You know, besides Vampire Bats

2111: All those Parisians partying. Man, this is going to make them long for the peace and quiet of poor Muslims rioting.

2113: Xena seems to be mysteriously absent. Xena would know just what to do here.

2114: Key Quote: “I think you all had better come see this.”

2115: Key Quote #2: “We’re out of time.”

2116: Federal Protective Services is Not Taking This Lying Down. They have Cancelled Vacations!

2118: Key Quote #3: “FEMA is stretched to its limit.” You’re tellin’ us.

2119: Captain Obvious Alert. “What are you going to do about the weather?” “Predict it.”

2122: Don’t worry. More Research is Being Undertaken!

2124: She has a Japanese kitty-cat tattooed on her butt. This is a Key Piece of Information.

2125: Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker … I mean James Brolin and Swoozie Kurtz are God’s Messengers. And God Needs Your Money.

2136: Really Overused Cliché and Bad Pun Alert! His report was just the Tip of the Iceberg!

2138: Russell Casse needs a hacksaw. Someone get the man his hacksaw! Oh, and an airplane and some booze, so he can go kill the aliens who are causing all this crazy weather.

2140: Russell Casse got his airplane. Unfortunately, it seems to be a Westwind I with the same Canadian tail number as a destroyed Vans RV-4 kitplane. (The registration number has apparently since been reassigned.) Methinks he’d be happier with that F-18 he had in Independence Day.

2144: Vocabulary word of the day: “toad-soaker”. Hopefully not related to “cork-soaker”.

2147: Those terrorist bastards! Now they’re using frogs! (Not to be confused with soaked toads.)

2149: Actual line from this movie: “Does anybody speak Arabic?” “Yeah. Durka durka.”

2150: Two full commercial breaks with absolutely no titillation whatsoever. Can we at least get an IPEX commercial or something?

2155: Tammy Faye’s assistant, or son, or something, has discovered the Plague of Frogs. And he has Seen the End of Days, and he is Repentant. God says he wants you to shave your pr0nstache, for starters.

2158: They’re modifying an SR-71! (For those of you not familiar with the aircraft, it was prone to in-flight breakups when subjected to loads of greater than about 1.4 Gs. Punching out at Mach 3 is not most people’s idea of fun, though it’s survivable. Penetrating severe weather in an aircraft with such a narrow operating envelope is an absolutely brilliant idea. By which I mean “if anyone can make this work, it’s Viper and Delko”.)

2206: Viper and Delko are going to find the heart of this sucker. In a plane approximately 1/3 as durable as a Cessna 172. And Random Trailer Guy just stole Russell Casse’s truck. Oh noes! How are he and Brenda are going to survive this hurricane-sized tornado is beyond me.

2217: Tammy Faye and Jim are going to make a fortune off this. And God saw that it was good, and He rejoiced. And Tammy Faye’s son hasn’t shaved the pr0nstache. God is Not Pleased.

2221: “GNN” has the worst hurricane reporters ever. As any Florida resident can tell you, 150 MPH gusts barely warrant the consideration of evacuation. Dan Rather can report from 150 MPH gusts with both hands tied behind his back. Now 200 MPH, well, that’s a little more serious. Don’t these screenwriters know anything? GOSH!

2229: Holy Multiple Sub-plots, Batman! My head hurts from trying to think about and follow them all right now.

2231: This is a Brand New Ballpark! With Four Lightning Arrestors and its own Weather Station! God wants me to speak His message!

2234: God didn’t want him to speak His message. Tammy Faye is in shock.

2243: Pr0nstache Guy is behind it all. He’s manipulating the weather to cause all this hysteria. I hate to spoil the ending, I really do.

2252: The sky Really Is Falling!

2301: Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. Who are these masked gunmen, and what’s the point of this 153d plot twist/sub-plot?

2307: To Be Continued. But not on this blog. Holy crap, this is too bad to watch any more. Humanity is going to survive, and Creepy Pr0nstache Guy is going to be exposed as the man behind the curtain. So now you don’t have to watch tomorrow either!