Blizza Blizza

You can’t sell a mixture of oil, water, colour, and flavours as “cheese”, so why is it that Kraft Foods sells a similar concoction as guacamole, containing less than two percent avocado? There’s a lot of complaining about the frivolity of some lawsuits filed in this country, but you heard it here first — this isn’t one of them. That crap is not guacamole. “Processed avocado food product,” maybe. But it sure isn’t guacamole.

Adrian Apgar, you are the smartest man alive. You got high on crack, then swam in an alligator-infested pond.

The story also has the best lead in the history of journalism:

In further news of the misadventures of people who are naked, a naked man on crack was pulled from the jaws of an alligator in Florida on Wednesday.

Red Forman Dumbass Rating:

Soon to be a major motion picture starring Samuel L. Jackson: Soap in a Microwave!

Everybody hates spam, even the spammers. I don’t tolerate it well in general, but at least when I get spam attempting to sell me “Ultra Allure Pheromones” or “A blonde screaming hard after a orgasm” or “BUY WINDOWS XP FOR $49.95!”, I can understand the motivation behind it. That sort of spam is like the nerdy kid everyone picked on in school who finally snaps and starts picking people off from the clock tower. You don’t agree with what he did, but you can understand where he’s coming from.

Then there’s the Hitler spam. Like Hitler’s irrational hatred of anything not Aryan, nobody understands what the hell the purpose of it is. Case in point:

Subject: you sample is augment

Possible Interpretation: Finishing a task quickly is not about rushing. That I have no time for A beer a day keeps the germs away. Money is honey and the richman jocks is always funny The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Honesty is the best policy. Possible interpretation: forbidden things are the most tempting (Biblical origin) Practice does not make perfect but a perfect practice makes perfect.

There’s no time like the present. Waste not, want not. When your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Possible Interpretation: fancy way of saying that we should play as a team and not as individual players

What, pray tell, is the purpose in sending that message? It isn’t trying to sell me software, penis pills, or Asian shemale donkey porn. It’s not trying to infect my computer with a virus and replicate itself across the Internet. It’s just wasting bandwidth, which accomplishes…nothing. It doesn’t really add substantially to the cost of Internet service (the amount of bandwidth wasted transmitting that message was negligible), it doesn’t tie up my connection, and it doesn’t burden my ISP’s servers any more than a commercial spam would.

If you’re going to be a cancer on the Internet, at least try to make yourself a buck in the process. Being a cancer just to be a cancer is a good reason for people to hang you from tall buildings by your toenails and slowly gouge out your vital organs with a wooden spoon. Just sayin’.

Michael Rosenberg on the Lions’ latest struggles:

Pretty soon, even Matt Millen will be holding a “Fire Millen” sign. And the Fords, impressed with his wit, will give him a contract extension.

Oh, if only he were kidding. The only thing left worth speculating about for Lions fans this season is whether Millen will pick a) a second-rounder-at-best with the first pick of the draft or b) another Charles Rogers-level headcase.

My money’s on A this year. In five years, mark my words, Lions fans will be calling for Brady Quinn’s head just as they were calling for Joey’s last year.

I don’t normally blatantly make fun of bug-filers here because, well, it’s not nice. I couldn’t pass this one up, though. It’s just too funny.

Bug 360402: Browser will not display ad images when “Block Web Advertising” is selected in Web Features preferences.

At the risk of sounding silly, what, exactly, did you expect would be blocked when the “Block Web Advertising” box was checked? And if, as it seems from the actual bug report, that isn’t exactly what was meant, why wouldn’t you proofread the summary you’re submitting to ensure that it doesn’t make you sound like a complete moron?

Red Forman Dumbass Rating:

Right, the voting thing. There’s a lot of complaint out there about the two-party system, how much it sucks, how it results in two parties that differ in name only, how it suppresses the real desires of the people, etc. The night before the election, I was reading through the local voting guide published by the League of Women Voters and paying particular attention to the third-party candidates for various offices. The following are all direct quotes from candidates’ personal statements.

From a candidate for governor, when asked how he would propose to bring additional revenue into the state budget:

Bring good paying manufacturing jobs back to America by replacing the federal income tax with revenue tarriffs.

Perhaps someone should review the difference between “governor” and “Congressman”.

From another gubernatorial candidate, when asked what specific proposals he had for increasing jobs in Michigan:

[Corporate welfare] has never increased the number of people employed and it never will. I will hire people directly, WPA-fashion, to do the State’s business.

Not sure how that’s going to balance the state’s budget there, buddy. Sounds like a massive increase in spending to me.

A candidate for attorney general had this to say about enforcing current environmental laws in Michigan:

The environment is very important. Government is guilty of pollution, as well as some private citizens. I would also work to see that new technology is not blocked by private interests to get more MPG fuel efficiency.

Say what who? This guy’s background, by the way, claims that he has a B.A. in languages and spent four years in the Air Force. Obviously English wasn’t one of the languages he studied.

A candidate for the Senate, whose background claims a B.S. in electrical engineering as well as “suggested the brake light in the rear window 7/7/77”, when asked about his concern for the size of the federal deficit:

Our constitution was written to eliminate flat paper money. [Perhaps “fiat”, as in “fiat money”, was meant here instead. — cl] Used God’s money of silver/gold. Today use our coins — eliminate paper. Twenty seven hundred years ago Isaiah spoke of the dump dogs that can’t bark in the [King James Bible]. Could that be our Federal Reserve System? Not Federal/No Reserve!

It gets better. The same guy, when asked what governmental measures he would implement to improve health care, said:

When the extended family was intact, Grandmother was the herbalist/primary care giver…God’s healing herbs are safe and effective without dangerous side effects. We should immediately train up and army of naturopathy doctors using God’s natural remedies including Colloidal Silver which cured my Lyme disease.

After reading these statements, it occurred to me that the reason these third-party candidates don’t enjoy wide support is because they’re so far out in left — or right — field that nobody but their friends and family (and probably not even many of those) take them seriously. We elect enough cranks without realising it; the last thing we need to be doing is electing self-proclaimed crazy people!

I promised more on the civic duty thing Tuesday morning. It’s now Friday night. Sometimes other things get in the way. That’s coming soon, though.

Work was shaping up to be a day of nothing on Tuesday with the weather being below company minimums for training flights and not being able to get hold of half my students. (I just got upgraded into a new plane and got a new student load on Monday, and scheduling didn’t inform any of them that I was their new instructor, so getting them out there for last-minute slots wasn’t happening.) Garrett, another one of the instructors, asked if I wanted to burn some time and go to Milwaukee for lunch, so I said sure.

We got to Milwaukee and grabbed a crew car from Signature, went to lunch at a fine little Italian place in the UW-Milwaukee neighbourhood a few blocks from where Garrett grew up, and headed back to the airport. Then a phone call came in from dispatch asking what our plans were. The weather had dropped down even further, contrary to the forecast, and was below company minimums even with special permission. We waited around a couple hours to see if things would get any better. They didn’t, and we got stuck in Milwaukee for the night. So much for voting.

Once we figured out we were stuck, we went out to dinner with one of Garrett’s friends and then saw the world’s worst movie: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. I don’t go for horror movies in general because most of them are chock full of bad acting, bad dialog, unrealistic gore and violence, etc. This one hits on all cylinders of bad — the acting is mediocre, the dialog and script are awful, and the villain isn’t particularly believable. Yeah, there are some sick bastards out there, but nobody this ridiculous.

Making my displeasure with the movie even more complete was the fact that it prevented me from taking the beautiful Jeannine Gauthier out for a drink after her shift at the desk at Signature finished at 2200. Grrr.

The weather was little better on Wednesday morning, but just better enough that we could head back. We were VFR for most of the flight back but got to shoot the approach down to about 200’ above minimums coming back in to Battle Creek. Yay for the instrument rating.

“Iraqi president says Democrats told him they will not pull out quickly”

Yes, because while we’re in the middle of fucking a nation right in its ass, we want to be sure that it gets satisfied too.

Everyone go exercise your civic duty and go vote. It’s the only meaningful way you can tell your governmental representatives whether or not they’re doing a good job.

More on this later. Time for work.

This is brilliant. Thank you, CNN.

Silent plane would cut airport noise

In related news, water is wet, and fire burns you.

In the ongoing contest between criminals and mind-altering substances, the criminals just lost another round. A 29-year-old Jackson man is now in jail after admitting at a party, presumably where alcohol was being served, that he “shot a guy in the head.”

Red Forman Dumbass Rating: