A document on my computer was created on Sunday, March 19th, 1995. Since the text in the document is not an original creation by me, we have to assume that it was written before I created the file in which to record it. That means that these words may have been composed exactly 10 years ago this very night!

The Meaning of Life?!? Charlie Bagwell - Senior Godwin High Life (lif) n., pl. lives (livz), adj. - n. 1a living; being alive. People animals and plants have life; rocks, dirt, and metals do not. Life is shown by growing and reproducing. SYN: being, existence. b a state, existence, or principle of existence conceived as belonging to the soul, especially in the Biblical and religious use: the spiritual life, eternal life. 2 the time of being alive; existence of an individual: a day of one's life, food enough to sustain life, a short life. During his life he was an outstanding doctor. According to Webster, this is the meaning of life. However, through this article I am hoping to go beyond this dictionary definition; to take YOU, the reader further into this mystery that has plagued mankind for centuries. For your information: this will not be your normal InSync article in that I have devised a new and ingenious way to deal with the subject matter. The gist of it is, I will quote what answer various teenagers have given me, and then find faults with their answers. I decided to begin my search for the meaning of life at the pillar of wisdom of the Richmond metropolitan area, what other than the Governor's School. Let's see what sort of enlightenment these students possess. Rich Friedburg, Sophomore at GSGIS quotes "The meaning of life is to live." Hmm... Thought-provoking, intelligent, Mr. Friedburg is a sheer genius. Perhaps Rich has a future as a dictionary author. Another Sophmore at GSGIS, Micah Edwards, states "Life is like a kumquat, I'm just not sure how." Sounds like something that was rejected from the Forrest Gump script. Micah, if you ever find out how life is like kumquat, I hope to be the first to know. Continuing with the sagacity of Governor's School students is Freshman Adam Moore. "I think the meaning of life would have to be that we are not perfect but should always strive to improve our lives and the lives of others. If we do this then maybe one day someone will live in a society where they know what the meaning of life." What keen insight this young lad possesses! This one quote actually makes some sense! Maybe there is some hope for Governor's School people after all. Finally after deciding that the Governor's School is too large of a plethora of knowledge for me, maybe I should move onto some other schools. For instance, Tommy Wojciaczyk, Senior at Monacan High says, "Life is a round trip from nowhere and back, where you can meet other travellers..." sounds promising, until the end "...And idolize Tommy." Well Tommy, the meaning of my life is certainly to idolize you, and I spend all my spare time in that practice. Jason Grunert, a Senior at Midlothian High brings up an interesting point. "I don't think that life has a meaning." Finally, the moment you all have been waiting for, the time for me to speak. I personally believe that life is a very complicated process, the scientific values of which we will completely comprehend some day soon. However, the philosophic values of life will not be discovered for many, many years. But, I honestly believe that there is some purpose to life. I do not think there is anything more melancholy than to believe that we are here for no purpose, just taking up space. Also, Someone somewhere has some reason for us being here, and that someone is probably laughing at us every time we trip on our own feet also. Enough of this psycho-babble, back to what you guys have to say. Brent Wolfe, Senior at Monacan High tries to sum life up with "The meaning of life is to live the fullest one you can.. One cannot dwell on anything that may have hurt them.. They just have to learn from the experience and move on. Unfortunately, that is much easier said than done." This is a good point indeed, however, I fail to see where past experiences has anything to do with the purpose of life. As for living life to the fullest, what is qualified as fullest? (I won't define it, don't worry). Like many, many students, Ben Allison, Freshman at Clover Hill gave me 42 as the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. For those of you who are naive, and have not read Douglas Adams' trilogy of the Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy, it is a series highly reccommended. According to Douglas Adams, billions and billions of years ago, a supercomputer called Deep Thought was programmed to find the answer to the ultimate question of Life the Universe and Everything. Deep Thought ultimately arrived to the resolution of 42. However, the people were not happy with this, and decided that it was actually the question that they did not understand. Thus, Deep Thought created a supercomputer, which in a few million millennia, would discover the question to Life, the Universe, and Everything. This supercomputer was the Earth, and five minutes before the Earth was to calculate the question, it was destroyed by aliens building a hyperspace bypass. Although just a tad off the wall, Douglas Adams does give us another point to philosophize about... Do we actually understand the question? When faced with the question, "What is the meaning of life," what would your immediate response be? Naturally, everyone has a different and varied answers, and maybe some of them are right, and some of them are wrong, or maybe all of them are right, or maybe they are all wrong. Maybe the meaning of life is to run around nude, or maybe the media is right and the meaning of life is the O.J. Simpson trial. The best answer that I received was from an adult. (Disclaimer: you know the old saying, don't trust anyone over 30.) "I think that the meaning of life is learning to understand and appreciate yourself. I don't mean in a cocky, conceited sort of way. I think that to be happy in life, you have to figure out what you are and what you like, and do it. If others share your compassions, that's fine. If they don't, no big deal. The irony of this is that once you decide that you don't need someone else to help you find the meaning and happiness, the more people are attracted to the self-assured person that you are. So when you decide you CAN be alone, you no longer need to be." This really blew me away! It makes so much sense, and yet it's so simple! What a drag though, nothing to make fun of. To conclude, although I doubt there are any universal truths that can be taken to heart through this article, I hope I at least provided a few laughs and an amusement for something that everyone takes so seriously. But, if you feel enlightened, send your check or money order to Charlie Bagwell....

I guess I know what Rich and Micah are doing. C.B. is too common a name for a good fast googling, but Tom Wojciaczyk? Easy! He went to Virginia Tech and now does computer work in Richmond for CVA! Jason Grunert? He went on to Tech for school, but the internet is silent after that. Brent Wolfe may have gone to college in Maryland and gone to work in therapeutic recreation. Who would have guessed?

Anyway, do you like apples? Well then, how do you like THEM apples?

The Internet taught me how to fold a shirt more efficiently.* Life is good.

(*Stop wasting time folding shirts the normal way! How to Fold a Shirt shows you the latest techniques and tricks to fold t-shirts, sweaters, dress shirts and more; the RIGHT way!)

no shit, sherlock

I only hang out with lawyers, and every so often they start arguing about the most inane things just because they can. As if anyone else cares about fourth amendment rights. I've started trying to put some perspective into the discussions, and I think I've finally hit on the right interjection. So the next time that one of my friend's starts to yell across the bar that Souter should have written a concurrence in part instead of a full dissent, I plan on just shouting out that I've started eating discarded food out of the trash cans around the city. They'll know it's a lie, but since I'll be pissing on the table at the time, they'll really wish I hadn't said it. It's just gross to even think about. The mental image will probably ruin the rest of their dinner. And if it doesn't, the pee is a pretty good plan B.

OMG! It's like the iPod for Geeks! Kids, here are your talking points!!!

TI-84 Plus Silver Edition Info for your Parents (pdf) Need help convincing your parents you need the new TI-84 Plus Silver Edition? All the important stuff they need to know is right here. Be patient with them. Remember, this stuff wasn’t around when they were in school, so it may take them a little longer to get it. Start by telling them that the TI-84 Plus Silver Edition is: An investment in your future. The TI-84 Plus Silver Edition is permitted for use on the SAT*, ACT**, and AP Calculus, Statistics, Physics, and Chemistry exams. Upgradeable. That means the TI-84 Plus Silver Edition can grow with you to deliver maximum performance from year to year. It’s a true investment in your education. Everything you need to succeed. The TI-84 Plus Silver Edition is loaded with the latest graphing technology plus tons of free Applications and included accessories. So you get the most bang for your, or uh, their buck. It even includes a built-in USB port and cables for easy downloads, an Organizer, Periodic Table, and more! Easy to use and impossible to live without. There are numerous tutorials and resources available online to get you started on the right track and help you if you get stuck. Plus, you can always call TI or visit the website for free technical support. A new way to think and achieve. The use of a graphing calculator can help you discover new ways to think about problems and analyze data to come up with your own answers to problems. The TI-84 Plus Silver Edition can give you a way to explore ideas and visualize concepts in greater depth than would otherwise be possible, and it can actually help lead to better comprehension of concepts and their real-world applications. Who could say no to all that? This is an investment in your education we’re talking about here, not some cell phone that takes pictures or a portable music player. Think about it. Make it a priority. Tell them to think about it...and to make it a priority. The worst they could say is, “we’ll see.”

Well played, Texas Instruments, well played.

Be Not Very Afraid

Thank you Sebastian Studio! The Bush On Mars Image is also pretty good (Thanks to Alma for the postcard).


That's it for now.

Here you go

Before I send you to the respective contests for the Republican and Democratic National Conventions...

Go check out the RNC's "Stand Up And Holla!"
Now go check out the DNC's "Speak Out To The Future!"

If you are between the ages of 18 and 24, I suggest entering both!

Okay, I give up. Irony's dead.

When I arrived back at my dorm, I discovered that our heating facilities must be broken, because we had our own...well, I'll just let the picture explain what I found. After seven hours of employment law, it seemed like a pretty funny night cap. I was so thankful that I had taken my camera to the earlier cupcake event. Now in the harsh light of noon, you may not have the same opinion about the whole thing. All I ask is that you don't take it out on your loved ones. They didn't do anything wrong. Apparently supplying steam is a very competitive business here in the naked city. I mean, when you have more than 300 people depending on the same boiler, you can be sure that they will be willing to pool their resources to obtain your services. As a shrewd businessman, you could sell long term contracts, like insurance against the threat of potential steam failure. If you can predict the standard rate of failure, you can probably make a pretty penny just giving building superintendents peace of mind. Maybe some of you out in middle America should start looking into moving to the big city to sell us your steam.

Interested? You can learn a lot from the website of the Mobile Steam Boiler Rental Corporation, it is guaranteed to get your blood boiling! Or at least excited about the growing field of steam supply. The demand for steam has never been higher, and as the 'pressures' on building supervisors to provide high quality water heating continue to build, you may start referring to your income stream as "old faithful!" So stop beating your swords into plowshares, wasting your time like that is sure to get you in hot water with your creditors.

Horrible jokes aside, The Mobile Steam Boiler Rental Corporation can also define its mission. They are "Supplier of temporary steam (high & low pressure) & hot water. Fleet of over 60 self-contained boiler units provide service from as little as 20 hp through 800 hp. On call 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to minimize down time for heating or manufacturing facilities which use steam and/or hot water." True American heroes. I can say this because I just got out of a shower where I used warm water. Later tonight, I may use lukewarm water to wash my face. It's sad to think about how those godless communists hate steam, I wonder if Marx could have foreseen Mobile Steam. I doubt it, he was hooked on opium or something. Or was that religion...

Visiting the home-page of my former employer, I discovered Eric Williams had won the coveted "Outstanding Service Award" which was great news, until I started reading the description...

Outstanding Service Award
Eric Williams
A/V Technician
Eric discovered a special print feature in Word that helps reduce the amount of paper used by the Operations Staff during their weekly staff meeeings. This IDEA provides a 46% reduction in the amount of paper used over a two-month period. Not to mention the fact that several people are now using the same printing format for internal documents, rough drafts, etc.

Please don't tell me that he won an award for showing people how to do double sided printing...

Looking around, I found a company that tells you what pilots are currently in production. Here is a sample from the next few weeks.

Looking around, I found a company that tells you what pilots are currently in production. Here is a sample from the next few weeks. If you read to closely, you will realize that you will soon be complaining to friends that there is nothing good on television. I personally only watch the best of the best, but I know some of you watch awful television. The future promises very bad television. I found this out when I stumbled upon a site that allows people in California to watch pilots. And let me tell you, these pilots sound awful. Let me post a quick list of what is taping next week.

Please note that I am not making any of these up.

These are actual pilots that people are hoping to make into network television shows. These are pilots that will be put in front of a live studio audience in the next two weeks. Network executives are having meetings about whether John and Jane Q. Couch-potato want to watch these once a week on Must See TV®.

Seriously, go check out this Pilots and Specials Page if you don't believe me. You will cry.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 7
	untitled Jessica Simpson project 7:00 PM - CBS Studio Center A new ABC comedy starring pop singer Jessica Simpson. She's an on-air reporter for a news magazine show.
THURSDAY, APRIL 8
	untitled Jennifer Love Hewitt project 7:00pm - CBS Studio Center Jennifer Love Hewitt as a sports producer and single mom who unwillingly becomes an on-camera reporter. With Josie Davis and James Patrick Stewart.
	D.O.T.S. 6:00pm - Hollywood Center Studios A new NBC comedy set in the world of meter maids. Starring Khary Payton, Stephen Dunham and Davenia McFadden.
THURSDAY, APRIL 15
	I DO, I DID, NOW WHAT? 7:00pm - Fox Studios Kate Hudson presents the story of a newly married couple getting past the honeymoon phase - based on a book by Jenny Lee. Cast info. TBA
FRIDAY, APRIL 16
	PLAN B 6:00pm - Universal Studios Caroline Rhea stars as a single, thirtysomething woman with career, weight and romance issues - which she says is loosely based on her own life.
	THE AMAZING WESTERBERGS 6:00pm - The Culver Studios Chris O'Donnell and Jay Harrington as brothers whose parents told them they could do anything - but who find that real life isn't that simple.
	SHACKING UP 7:00pm - CBS Studio Center New comedy for TheWB about a 24 year-old who moves back home with his mom (Fran Drescher) ...and her 24 year-old boyfriend.
MONDAY, APRIL 19
	FOSTER HALL 7:00pm - CBS Studio Center A brother and sister are reunited after years in separate foster homes. Starring Busy Philipps ("Dawson's Creek"), Macaulay Culkin and Greg Germann.
TUESDAY, APRIL 20
	SAVAGES 5:30pm - Universal Studios This comedy centers on a blue-collar single father (Keith Carradine) raising five teenage boys. Loosely based on the life of producer Mel Gibson.
	THE FRIENDLYS 7:30pm - CBS Studio Center A recently deceased mogul's trophy wife and his daughter wrangle over the business. Starring Julie Bowen, Dave Foley, Billy Gardell and Ana Gasteyer.
	NEVERMIND NIRVANA (Run-Thru) 5:00pm - CBS Studio Center Kal Penn & Judy Greer in a comedy about what happens when an Indian-American's immigrant parents move in with him and his Caucasian wife. (Dir. by David Schwimmer)
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 21
	untitled Aisha Tyler project 7:00 - Warner Bros. Studios A woman (Aisha Tyler) starts a new job with a gigantic athletic wear corporation. Co-starring Adam Goldberg, Lucy Davis. exec. prod.: Lisa Kudrow.

Again, here is the way to keep checking future Pilots and Specials at tvtickets.com. But be warned: "ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE!" Be afraid, please.

On a side note, I hope this is the last time Ms. Drescher appears on my online journal in any context other than UHF. That's it. Have some pleasant dreams. Finally, I am glad to see Jennifer Love Hewitt is not yet past her prime. May she one day make a good television show. Or at least not lose the use of her arms.

The Above are Christopher Lee (as Saruman from Lord of the Rings) and Ahmed Yassin (former spiritual leader for the Hamas).

Twins? Do we make our movie villians look like those people we'd like to consider bad?



The Above are Christopher Lee (as Saruman from Lord of the Rings) and Ahmed Yassin (former spiritual leader for the Hamas).

Read on for a Contest!

FACTS:

Having returned to my apartment, I found a piece of a key jammed into my apartment door locks. I went down, reported the problem, and the super fixed the issue with needle-nose pliers. Obviously I am talking about this situation in the past, so you know everything has worked out fine for me. Don't think I am posting this from some undisclosed location.

MY SPECULATION:

The strange part is that no one else has filed a report about the problem. Someone's key is broken. It broke in my lock. I don't think someone took a piece of a key that was already broken and THEN shoved it into my lock. Perhaps it is my roommate's key bit (that's the easy answer). There is a small chance that it is some stranger's key, drunk and on the wrong floor they seized on the mistaken idea that it was their door. This person, most likely my roommate, left the building (or at least the floor) without a way to get back into their apartment. Why not report it? Did they think keys and locks are impossible to fix? Were they abducted during the key turning process? Is the bit of key a clue?

ASSIGNMENT:

I invite all speculation and encourage creativity. Perhaps I'll publish the best of the comments, or score them for accuracy. I'm off for the night, so you must do it for yourself. Stay strong.

(The answer key will presumably come to me tomorrow morning. Rimshot!)

Sorry for the absence. Strange that not posting things didn't lead to me posting things. Perhaps posting lots of things constantly would lead to lots of posts. Some online journals update twenty to thirty times a day, and I love them. How do you feel about the heavy hitters? Do you visit them more than once a day? Maybe it is time for me to start becoming a clearinghouse for other information. I could become the hip new kid on the block. People would bookmark me and check me on their lunch break. If I had the power, all would love me and despair.

What's stopping me, you ask? I think there may be too many slice-of-life updates at this point to appeal to such an audience. Where is the substance of this webpage? Why am I coming here every day while I eat my turkey sandwich that my wife prepared? Something needs to balance out the mindless drivel that masquerades as a brilliant retort. People come for a quick summary of interesting things, and most people do not find my life interesting. Secondly, I can't respond brilliantly if the only breaking news featured on this site is first person.

I am not online because I dream of building a schizophrenic blog where I am at once the subject, the reporter, the commentator. This is what I will call the trilemma of the journal. To be interesting, you would like to control all three. But in doing so, the posting becomes less interesting. When I am the subject, reporter, and commentator, I did something, I tell you I did the action, and then I give an opinion about it. Very boring. If I want this blog to play in Peoria, I need to respect the trilemma. I need to make sure that at most any one post is only embracing two of the three. Normally it will be best if I embrace reporter and commentator. I am not a famous celebrity. Making me the subject will almost always guarantee boredom. I think I can still report on events that I attend, for in those posts, the subject is the event itself, speaking the only way that it can: through me.

Utimately, I must seek out an "other" in order to give myself the distance necessary to offer a retort. Maybe I will avoid crazy news and stupid jokes. But if not humor and crazy news, then what? Humorous fake news, of course! (What, did you think I was going to instantly jump into the rough and tumble world of politics today? That probably would happen for a while. Not until August if I play my cards close to my chest.) So this marks a new attempt to reinvent the blog as its one year anniversary approaches. Also, I am also going to try and use the trackback feature to alert random people that I am linking to their material. So here is the first attempt at everything.

White House To Seek Ban On Gay Sex On The Moon
By REUTERS
Filed at 1:07 p.m. ET 02/26/04

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Worried by flagging poll numbers, a deteriorating situation in Iraq, and a sluggish economy, President Bush called on Congress today to approve a constitutional amendment that would ban gay sex on the Moon. Republican leaders hailed the move as a bold step to unite the country in a bold and forward-looking strategy to spread family values across the solar system, and protect the legacy of the Apollo missions.

(read on...)

That should keep the moon in line until we blow it up. We have the technology. The time is now. Science can wait no longer. Children are our future. America can, should, must, and will blow up the moon!

Update... And we'll do it during a full moon to be sure we get it all.

Two points. I don't read fan fiction. I don't read slash fiction. But I like knowing it exists. I went on a quest last night to find "Wings" Fan Fiction. Slash would have just been icing on the cake. But unfortunately, there isn't ANY as far as I could tell. I guess Fay and Roy weren't able to inspire people like Kirk and Spock. No one ever sat down and said "I can do better than Hollywood" when it came to Wings. Perhaps there are some shows that are just TOO GOOD for fan fiction to be worth it. But seriously folks, if you know of any, please let me know, because other wise I will go through life thinking that there will never be any Wings Fan Fiction on the web. (You think I am trying get my online journal to register on Google when the next person searches for Wings Fan Fiction? You nailed me) The only thing I now know is that Helen went on to become a somewhat successful country music singer, and that perverts still post things on official websites.

All that Fan Fiction related searching made me remember the first time I ever stumbled across a piece of fan fiction that made me laugh. I then went out of my way to find it. Let me give you a taste and then a link to read the whole thing. I have never gotten past the opening lines, but I am POSITIVE this is the best fan fiction ever written. But don't take my word for it... (oh man, that's a indirect Star Trek reference)

Los Angeles, 2029. Nearly 4 billion perished in the War of Judgement Day. The survivors faced an even more terrifying battle - the war against the Machines. But the final battle would not be fought in the future - it would be fought in the past... Hill Valley, California, 1955. Dr Emmett Brown struggles to attach a cable to the clock tower in a thunderstorm... while young Marty McFly accelerates a Flux Capacitor equipped DeLorean towards the cable, aiming to hit it at the critical speed of 88 miles per hour, exactly the moment the lightning bolt strikes... Blue Rock, New Mexico, 1999. Theorizing that one can time travel within his own lifetime, Dr Sam Beckett steps into the Quantum Leap Accelerator - and vanishes! [Screen blurs into a brilliant white light. Rays condense out of the light and resolve themselves into a scene. Sam Beckett blinks, gulps, and takes a look around. He is in a high-powered sports vehicle, accelerating along a city street at night. The interior of the car is lined with electronic gadgetry, blinking furiously. A display shows the years 1955 and 1985. Peering into the rear-view mirror, Sam sees a young teenager's face. He looks back to the windscreen, to see a rapidly approaching wall of shops, and a lightning bolt arcing across an overhead cable. Reaching frantically for the brake, his hand slips and hits the circuit board. The display blinks from 1985 to 1984. The next instant the car explodes in brilliant white light.] Sam: Oh, boy! [The car leaves behind a glowing smoke cloud and a trail of burning tire marks.]

_________________________________________________________ | | | Q U A N T U M L E A P | | ____ ____ ___ | | | \ | | / | / / / / / | | |____/ |____| | |___/ / / / / | | | \ | | | | \ \ \ \ \ | | |____/ | | \___ | \ \ \ \ \ | | ___ __ ___ _ _ _ _ _ __ ___ __ ___ | | TO | |_ |__| | | | | |\ | |__| | | | |__| | | THE | |__ | \ | | | | | \| | | | |__| | \ | |_________________________________________________________|

[The car emerges from the timewarp in a dark, deserted alleyway. Mist drifts menacingly along the gutters. The DeLorean is covered with ice and vapour. Beckett cracks the gullwing door open and it swivels upwards. He steps out] Sam: Hello? Anyone there? Al, where *are* you? [The door of a sporting goods shop opens and out walks a big macho guy with bulging biceps and carrying a shotgun] Sam: Excuse me, but can you tell me where I am? Man [in Austrian accent]: Do - you - know - Sarah - Connor? Sam: I'm sorry, I've never heard the name before. Man: [gives an icy stare, walks slowly away] I'll - be - back. Sam: Al, I'm getting impatient. [The Imaging Chamber door opens and Al appears, wearing a fluorescent pink suit and black bowtie, with cigar and handlink in hand] Sam: It's about time. Who am I and what am I doing here? Al: Nice DeLorean. Well, Ziggy's not quite sure. [hits handlink] Here's what we've got on you so far though. Your name is Marty McFly, you're a typical American teenager. Born in Hill Valley, California, 1970. Your lifelong dream is to be a rock star, but unfortunately that means your school grades have been dropping. In fact, if you don't get your act together soon, you'll be out of the class. Sam: Sounds fairly straightforward so far. I'm here to get Marty back into school, right? Al: Well, it's a bit more complicated than that. You see, the last few weeks you've been seeing a Dr Emmett Brown. Sam: Doctor of medicine or psychiatry?

Continue reading Quantum Leap Back to the Terminator.

It took me a while to find it. Since the actual title for the file is written with bars and dashes, I had to sort through all sorts of pages that mention Marty McFly, Sam, and the Terminator. And there are lots of them. Nerds love time travel. Finally, I remembered why I had stumbled across it in the first place. In college, I was trying to find the correct lead-in to the Quantum Leap show ("and so Dr Beckett finds himself") and this piece of Fan Fiction happens to show up when you search for it. Leave it to the nerds. Like Nate Cull, who broke off from his Star Trek Fan Fiction to pen this classic in 1994. That's ten years ago for those of you playing along at home. And all this time, it was right under your noses.

This search, having been more targeted than my previous quest to correctly quote a line from a television show, also turned hilarious. At first I was worried that I wouldn't find it. Then it dawned on me that maybe NO ONE ELSE had ever had the idea to have a Back to the Future, Quantum Leap cross-over. I began to think that boy Nate was our last hope. But No, there is another. (Direct Star Wars Reference). And that another is none other than Mary Jean Holmes. She has done a BTTF/QL crossover AND a sequel. Both are available free of charge on her website (Outatime and No Time Like the Present). She has done much in the world of cross-overs. Ghostbusters, Hook (that's right, Marty, meets Peter Pan), and Lord of the Rings have all interacted with the DeLorean and its Flux Capacator. (She also has BTTF Sims Skins, if you really wanted to control Marty.

So that was funny to me. And now we will wait for people to flock to my website.

Also, happy birthday to other people.

Two authors named Jeff Alexander and Tom Bissell have take the time to write a book called Speak, Commentary: The Big Little Book of Fake DVD Commentaries, Wherein Well-Known Pundits Make Impassioned Remarks about Classic Science Fiction Films. It's A Gas! (formerly called "Liberal Aliens, Zuzu's Petals, Meddlesome Nazis, and One Conspiracy to Rule Them All"). From the internet: This softcover book includes a "director's cut" of Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn's commentary on "The Fellowship of the Ring," deleted scenes from the famous Dinesh D'Souza and Ann Coulter recording session  for "Aliens," Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson musing on the hidden  meaning of "Planet of the Apes," and Dick Cheney and William Bennett's  detailed analysis of "Star Wars: Episode I."

I have not really looked at the fake D'Souza/Coutler commentary, but McSweeney has been kind enough to post the text to everything online. Before I move into the substance that I want you to see, here is a link if you want to purchase Speak, Commentary.

So, again using the word ado, I present both links to, and some of the dialogue from, the

"Unused Audio Commentary by Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky (and also a link to Part Two)"
Recorded Summer 2002, for the Fellowship of the Ring (Platinum Series Extended Edition) DVD
(Zinn is a leftist historian, Chomsky is a political dissident/liguistics professor)

Zinn: Well, you know, it would be manifestly difficult to believe in magic rings unless everyone was high on pipe-weed. So it is in Gandalf's interest to keep Middle Earth hooked.
Chomsky: How do you think these wizards build gigantic towers and mighty fortresses? Where do they get the money? Keep in mind that I do not especially regard anyone, Saruman included, as an agent for progressivism. But obviously the pipe-weed operation that exists is the dominant influence in Middle Earth. It's not some ludicrous magical ring.
----
Chomsky: And note how Gandalf's magic is based on gunpowder, on explosions.
Zinn: Right.
Chomsky: And it is interesting, too, that Gandalf's so-called magic is technological, and yet somehow technology seems to be what condemns Saruman's enterprises, as well as those of the Orcs.
----
Zinn: Especially considering the economic sanctions no doubt faced by Mordor. They must be dreadful. We see now that the Black Riders have been released, and they're going after Frodo. The Black Riders. Of course they're black. Everything evil is always black. And later Gandalf the Grey becomes Gandalf the White. Have you noticed that?
Chomsky: The most simplistic color symbolism
----
Zinn: Gandalf mentions the evil stirring in Mordor. That's all he has to say. "It's evil." He doesn't elaborate on what's going on in Mordor, what the people are going through. They're evil because they're there.
Chomsky: I think the fact that we never actually see the enemy is quite damning. Then again, Gandalf is the greatest storyteller of all. He weaves the tales that strand Middle Earth in this state of perpetual conflict.
Zinn: He is celebrated on one hand as a great statesman, a wise man, and viewed by the people who understand the role that he actually plays as a dangerous lunatic and a war criminal.
----
Zinn: Right. "What does the eye command, my lord?" This is what the Orcs ask Saruman. In other words, what does the palantir say? Clearly the Orcs know a lot more about the people of Rohan and Gondor than the people of Rohan and Gondor have ever cared to know about them. They're curious beings.
Chomsky: Naturally, it's in Rohan/Gondor's interest to keep the Orcs obscured, to make everything as restricted and dehumanizing as possible. It's always the first step toward genocide. And is this — is there anything less than genocide being advocated in this film?
Zinn: I don't think so.
Chomsky: Is there any kind of idea that men should live in peace with the Orcs?
Zinn: Think of the scenes in the prologue with all the arrows hitting these thousands of Orcs. We're supposed to think that this is a good thing.
Chomsky: I think this is a tragedy, this story. Because it's about two cultures. And poor leadership. It's a human tragedy, and an Orcish tragedy.
----
Chomsky: And notice the way Arwen Evenstar greets Strider: a knife to the throat. I think that's a very telling, very interesting thing that happens over and over. Whenever "friendly" people encounter one another, they're raising swords, looking fearful and distrustful.
----
Chomsky: I think this is an interesting scene — Aragorn in Rivendell looking upon the Isildur mural — because it shows how the militarization of their propaganda has fed their cultural behaviors and religious beliefs.
Zinn: Isildur's broken sword, you mean?
Chomsky: The myth. I mean, look at this museum, this cult, all based around a broken sword. They've developed a religion so that people can be effectively marshaled into battle. And Aragorn is a part of that. He's a king, performing a ceremony for people to continue this senseless belief in some kind of genetic superiority. It is rather like saying, "I have the signet ring of the house of the tsar," or something. Now I can rule.
Zinn: Well, I think this scene shows us what kind of person Aragorn is — a loner, possibly a drug lord.
----
Zinn: And listen to what Aragorn tells Frodo: "You have my sword."
Chomsky: So militaristic.
Zinn: Notice that no one says, "You have my diplomatic skills."
----
Zinn: Here, very significantly, we have the Bridge of Khazad-Dûm. You will notice that what is destroyed is a bridge — another potential connector.
Chomsky: On a symbolic level, that is a very good point.
Zinn: All the borders in this film are constantly being destroyed, or overrun, or eliminated, or sealed. It's all about fear — fearing the other. Notice, too, that the Elf Legolas jumps across the ruined bridge first.
----
Zinn: And even here the Elves hold, you know, arrows to his head. He's completely brutalized. But of course Gimli falls in love with Galadriel, thus perpetuating the Dwarves' self-hatred.
Chomsky: It's somewhat similar to the method the Elves use to ensnare people like Aragorn — to affect their Elvish self-esteem. They want to be worshipped. It seems as though a peculiar kind of brainwashing occurs whenever anyone is exposed to Elf culture.

NYC got snow today, in case you either don't live here or didn't notice.

It was only for about 45 minutes and it melted in an hour or two.

Exams are coming up, so posts will either get a whole lot funnier, or they will die off completely. Or maybe there will be no drastic change. Hard to predict my behavior at this point. I will say that anyone looking to visit me in the next 21 days will have a very boring time. Such is life. Luckily, most of my friends are in similar boats. Or they work for a living, so they will never visit.

Today on the walk to school at 10 am, I noticed a garbage bag (ala American Beauty) except instead of just getting blown around in a circle next to me, the gust of wind caught it and took it up, up, up. The large library was acting somewhat like a wind breaker, and the stream was obviously going straight up the building, because the bag ascended up to the top of the twelve story building and then took off down the street, well above the crowds of students. Had I not been at the library when it came by, I would not have noticed it. It occurred to me that if I had started racing after it screaming "my bag, my bag!" I probably never would have caught up with it. I sort of wonder if it is in Brooklyn now. It was heading east, but I imagine that the wind above the buildings is not as strong, since it is not forced into narrow channels. Anyone know the physics of that? i assume it is like how a liquid will move faster in a narrower stream so that the same amount of the liquid (or gas) will get through in the same amount of time. Like when you put your thumb over part of a hose, the water begins moving faster and therefore goes farther.

From that, you should be able to tell that noting else happened today. A little bit of studying, a lot of sitting. I feel like substantive due process is teasing me. Maybe I will get it tomorrow night. Maybe I will get a coke in the next forty minutes. That actually seems more likely.

PS. I am starting to shop around for potential DC accommodations for the summer, let me know if you have a particular expertise in such matters.

This is just to remind you all that I used to work in a bookstore. If the images are too low quality for you, feel free to go to Pearls Before Swine's Archive and start reading. I reduced the quality since all I really want to read at this point was the text, and you can do that with these.

Having been inspired to try and have one interesting thought a day, I spent most of my 15 minutes outside today thinking about what I could say about my life in NYC.

First off, David Foster Wallace would weep.

The Wendy's Fast Food Restaurant across from my apartment building has numerous uniform shirts for its employees, so it changes from day to day. I notice this because I go at least twice a week for either a snack or a full meal. It is physically across the street. If I hadn't lost my tear ducts in Nam, I would have to admit that it makes me so happy that I cry at night as I gaze out my window at Dave's Palace. It seems that the standard operating procedure is to have all the employees wearing the same shirt on the same day. I have never gone twice in one day, so it could even potentially be that each shift has its own 'flavor. I just don't know.

So, for the first month or so this year, I wasn't noticing the shirts. You go with people, you are distracted. You have a really short line, you spend all your time at the cash register worrying that what you order isn't exactly what you wanted. I mean, do I want two sandwiches and chili? Or would one sandwich, chile, and 5 nuggets be better? It's a short walk home, but the regret can last well into the night. But eventually, one shirt caught my eye.

It is a standard red polo shirt. Probably cotton/poly blend. Nothing special. Obviously not meant to last long in the environment of grease and ketchup. But just as obviously meant only for Wendy's employees in the Big Apple, for you see, my friends, there is a Statute of Liberty depicted over the right breast. I do not know if it is a press-on, but my limited analysis indicates that it is interwoven with the fabric of the shirt. I do not know the technical term for such a procedure or style, having been limited to trying to sow three or four merit badges on a boy scout sash (The morally straight debate will have to wait for another entry). Either way, this version of Lady Liberty looks professional enough to quell any fears that this might have been a rouge local employee of this particular store. I find it hard to imagine that this was anything but a corporate decision by officers who are paid to make these kinds of "branding" decisions every day. I cannot see a man in a McJob, after a long day of flipping burgers and dealing with jerks like me then sitting in the employee lounge for hours on end slowly applying the basic lessons of Photoshop to the world of fabric design...it just strains even my willingness to except the impossible (and for a time, I believed in a god! so you can see that I am not one tied to reality).

For you see, these Statutes of Liberty, how ever they arrived upon the shirts, do not hold up a lamp for huddled masses. And it not because she has suffered the same fate as a famous statute of Venus. She still retains the appendage that makes it possible to hold things in the air. In fact, she remains standing, with arms raised into the sky of red poly/cotton. These shirts display our proud lady, free from the shackles of tyranny, choosing to hold aloft a hamburger.

Irony is dead. And now my chili is cold.

Still willing to see Roadhouse: The Stage Play with anyone who has 20 dollars to burn. Only two weekends left, people!

Oh, and this calendar is out. I think it speaks to us all.

I learned something new today.

The name of the first Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote cartoon?

The Fast and the Furry-ous

I don't know if this is true or not, but at this point, I just do not care.

"At approximately 2 p.m. on the afternoon of December 11, 1932, a worker at the Macgillicuddy plant accidentally closed a steam escape valve that should have never been closed except during maintenance on the boilers. Tremendous pressure built up inside Boiler No. 2, and within seconds the powerful coal-fired boiler exploded, collapsing the scaffold above it that supported the main molasses refining tank. The tank, loosed of its moorings, tipped sideways and crashed into the east wall of the plant, shattering through the bricks and dumping its full contents--2,000,000 gallons of boiling molasses--onto Main Street.

Hundreds of townspeople were innocently strolling up and down the street at that moment, when suddenly T.R. Eakle, a shoe-shine boy working outside Metzger's Drugstore, cried out, "Molasses!" It was the last word he would ever utter, as the wall of boiling goo oozed over him and dragged him down, caramelizing him instantly. Pedestrians rushed to escape the sugary tsunami, darting into shop doors and even leaping headlong through display windows to get out of the molasses' path."

Read more about the Sucarnoochee Molasses Disaster Festival if you dare. (page hasn't been updated since 2001)

I was on my way to the post office to pick up my case of free M&M's (sent to me because I forwarded an e-mail to three other people, celebrating the fact that the year 2003 is "MM III" in Roman numerals), when I ran into a friend whose neighbor, a young man, was home recovering from having been served a rat in his bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken (which is predictable, since as everyone knows, there's no actual chicken in Kentucky Fried Chicken, which is why the government made them change their name to KFC).

Anyway, one day this guy went to sleep and when he awoke he was in his bathtub and it was full of ice and he was sore all over and when he got out of the tub he realized that HIS KIDNEY HAD BEEN STOLEN. He saw a note on his mirror that said "Call 911!" but he was afraid to use his phone because it was connected to his computer, and there was a virus on his computer that would destroy his hard drive if he opened an e-mail entitled "Join the crew!"

He knew it wasn't a hoax because he himself was a computer programmer who was working on software to prevent a global disaster in which all the computers get together and distribute the $250.00 Neiman-Marcus cookie recipe under the leadership of Bill Gates. (It's true - I read it all last week in a mass e-mail from BILL GATES HIMSELF, who was also promising me a free Disney World vacation and $5,000 if I would forward the e-mail to everyone I know.)

The poor man then tried to call 911 from a pay phone to report his missing kidneys, but a voice on the line first asked him to press #90, which unwittingly gave the bandit full access to the phone line at the guy's expense. Then reaching into the coin-return slot he got jabbed with an HIV-infected needle around which was wrapped a note that said, "Welcome to the world of AIDS."

Luckily he was only a few blocks from the hospital - the one where that little boy who is dying of cancer is, the one whose last wish is for everyone in the world to send him an e-mail and the American Cancer Society has agreed to pay him a nickel for every e-mail he receives. I sent him two e-mails and one of them was a bunch of x's and o's in the shape of an angel (if you get it and forward it to more than 10 people, you will have good luck but for only 10 people you will only have OK luck and if you send it to fewer than 10 people you will have BAD LUCK FOR SEVEN YEARS).

So anyway the poor guy tried to drive himself to the hospital, but on the way he noticed another car driving without its lights on. To be helpful, he flashed his lights at him and was promptly shot as part of a gang initiation.

Send THIS to all the friends who send you their mail and you will receive 4 green M&Ms -- if you don't, the owner of Proctor and Gamble will report you to his Satanist friends and you will have more bad luck: you will get sick from the Sodium Laureth Sulfate in your shampoo, your spouse will develop a skin rash from using the antiperspirant which clogs the pores under your arms, and the U.S. government will put a tax on your e-mails forever.

I know this is all true 'cause I read it on the Internet.
Author unknown

As my only comment on baseball ALL year, I will say that I cannot imagine that anyone was praying for the Cubs to win more than "That Guy" who went for the foul ball. [ futurama] Too bad there is no God and his idiotic human ideals were laughable!! [/futurama] I have very little to say to him, mainly because I don't know him. [begin steve martin] Luckily, some people have a way with words. Other people..uh..not have way? [/steve martin]

[begin wil wheaton] ...and if you ever come to Los Angeles, I'll get some hired goons, and we'll take you out for a beer at one of the best pubs in the city. If anyone tries to f*ck with you, those hired goons will kick their punk asses while we exchange high-fives. It will be sweet! [/wil wheaton]

I'll be here all week. Try the veal! Thank you and goodnight.

As you all will soon be aware, I think that we have another actor in charge of California and the focus of politics can quickly return to the national scene.

As a public service for those of you who will be debating politics in your blogs, on message boards, and on other people's comment sections -- you MUST know Godwin's Law

Godwin's Law FAQ
-or-
'How to post about Nazis and get away with it'

One of the most famous pieces of Usenet trivia out there is "if you mention Hitler or Nazis in a post, you've automatically ended whatever discussion you were taking part in". Known as Godwin's Law, this rule of Usenet has a long and sordid history on the network - and is absolutely wrong. This FAQ is an attempt to set straight as much of the history and meaning of Godwin's Law as possible, and hopefully encourage users to invoke it a bit more sparingly. Of course, knowing Usenet, it won't do an ounce of good...

I. The Basics

1. What is Godwin's Law?

Godwin's Law is a natural law of Usenet named after Mike Godwin concerning Usenet "discussions". It reads, according to the Jargon File:

As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

2. What does it mean?

It pretty much means exactly what it says - as a Usenet thread goes on, the chances of somebody or something being compared to a Nazi approach one.

3. Yes, but what does it *mean*?

Aah, now *there's* the real question.

In case your head has been buried in the sand for the last sixty years or so, the Nazis were a German political party lead by Adolf Hitler that slaughtered upwards of ten million people that didn't meet their standards of "ethnic purity" and set off to conquer Europe and the world in World War II. They are generally considered the most evil group of people to live in modern times, and to compare something or someone to them is usually considered the gravest insult imaginable.

As a Usenet discussion gets longer it tends to get more heated; as more heat enters the discussion, tensions get higher and people start to insult each other over anything they can think of. Godwin's Law merely notes that, eventually, those tensions eventually cause someone to find the worst insults that come to mind - which will almost always include a Nazi comparison.

4. That still doesn't answer my question. What does it *MEAN*?

The Law is generally used on Usenet as an indicator of whether a thread has gone on too long, who's playing fair and who's just slinging mud, and who finally gets to "win" the discussion. It has, over time, become the closest thing to an impartial moderator that Usenet can get.

So, what this means in practical terms:

- If someone brings up Nazis in general conversation when it wasn't necessary or germane without it necessarily being an insult, it's probably about time for the thread to end.

- If someone brings up Nazis in general conversation when it was vaguely related but is basically being used as an insult, the speaker can be considered to be flaming and not debating.

- If someone brings up Nazis in any conversation that has been going on too long for one of the parties, it can be used as a fair excuse to end the thread and declare victory for the other side.

5. So - *WHAT DOES IT MEAN*?

Fine, fine - it means that somebody's eventually going to say something about the Nazis in any thread that lasts very long. When it happens, the thread is going to start either degenerating into a long flamewar over Nazi Germany or about Godwin's Law. Either way, the thread is effectively over, and you can safely killfile the thread and move on.

II. What does it mean?

1. Didn't we already spend the last section talking about this?

Well, yeah, but people don't seem to get the point...

2. What happens if we're actually talking about Nazis?

Then you've already invoked Godwin's Law, and the chances are that your thread isn't going to last all that much longer as a sane discussion. Them's the breaks.

That isn't to say, of course, that you can't talk about Nazis and such on Usenet - this *is* Usenet, after all, where virtually every conversation that goes on is fairly ludicrous in the first place. It's just going to take you a lot more effort to find real information out of there and to avoid getting yourself off on side-threads - which you'll eventually do regardless, but you can try to put it off.
This also applies if a thread mutates into an actual discussion of Nazis, of course.

3. What about arguing with Neo-Nazis?

Arguing with Neo-Nazis is probably the quickest path to getting Nazi invocations, because, well, they're actually accurate. Still, trying to invoke Godwin's Law near a Neo-Nazi isn't really a good idea because it's not terribly original and they'll probably get off on it anyway. Just ignore them and occasionally publish a FAQ detailing what actually happened during the Holocaust and such; arguing probably isn't going to help you.

4. How can I use Godwin's Law to my advantage?

In the proper kind of flamewar, Godwin's Law can be used as a gambit - how can you force your opponent to invoke the Law? Actually teaching these skills is tough, of course, and is best done through experience. Experience with chess and alt.flame are recommended.

5. What should I do if somebody else invokes Godwin's Law?

The obvious response is to call them on it, say "thread's over", and declare victory. This is also one of the stupidest possible responses, because it involves believing far too much in the power of a few rules that don't say exactly what you wish they said anyway. The proper response to an invocation is probably to simply followup with a message saying "Oh. I'm a Nazi? Sure. Bye" and leave, and in most cases even that much of a post is unnecessary.

6. "Hitler!" Ha! The thread is over!

Nope, doesn't work that way. Not only is it wrong to say that a thread is over when Godwin's Law is invoked anyway (Usenet threads virtually always outlive their usefulness), but long ago a corollary to the Law was proposed and accepted by Taki "Quirk" Kogama:

Quirk's Exception: Intentional invocation of this so-called "Nazi Clause" is ineffectual.

Sorry, folks. Nice try, though.

7. Does Godwin's Law apply in the real world?

Actually, yeah, but usually discussions in Real Life end by somebody wandering off in disgust before it can be invoked.

8. Are there any topics that lead directly to Godwin Invocations?

Well, yeah. Of course. Case's Corollary to the Law states "if the subject is Heinlein or homosexuality, the probability of a Hitler/Nazi comparison being made becomes equal to one" - but that's just an old list. Abortion and gun control debates always lead to Nazi comparisons; talk with a Libertarian for more than a few hours and he'll almost certainly bring up Nazis; book-burning is pretty much considered a sub-topic of Nazism at this point. Hell, talk about anything politically related and you'll eventually get there.

If you're really bored, a fun game to play is Six Degrees of Godwin. Take a topic - any topic - and see how quickly you can relate it to Nazis using legitimate topic drift methods. For example: a discussion about computers will eventually lead to discussions of keyboards and which are best, followed by a lot of complaining about the Windows key on 104-key keyboards, leading to complaints about Microsoft, forcing the standard MS-vs-government flamewar that I'm sure you're all aware of, leading to attacks on Microsoft's "fascist" tactics by one side or another, which will force the other side to start talking about the differences between fascism, capitalism, and, of course, Nazism! The fun never stops!

Appendix A: The Many Forms of Godwin's Law

"You can tell when a USENET discussion is getting old when one of the participants drags out Hitler and the Nazis." - Richard Sexton (http://www.vrx.net/richard/) stating what would later be known as Godwin's Law, Message-ID <21000@gryphon.COM>, 16 Oct 1989

"Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies: As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." - Mike Godwin, first article about the topic in the Google archives, Message-ID <1991Aug18.215029.19421@eff.org>, 18 Aug 1991

:Godwin's Law: /prov./ [Usenet] "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups.

- The Jargon File

Hitler, Nazis, nazis, and net.cops: Warning: now that this FAQ has mentioned Hitler and Nazis, UseNet Rule #4 (also known as Godwin's Rule, after Mike Godwin of the EFF, sci.crypt, and comp.org.eff.talk, a sometime foe of David Sternlight (q.v.) [even though it was apparently in use, by Richard Sexton {q.v.} among others, before Mike's 1988 (?) net.advent; the "Godwin's" part seems to stem from "Rich Rosen's Rules of Net.Debate, which I don't have a copy of]) says it will be coming to an irrelevant and off-topic end soon. Just as there will always be newbies ("It's *always* September, *somewhere* on the net" - response to a 1993 wave of delphi.com postings on a.f.u), there will always be people who see the net and are repulsed because there's stuff there they don't want to see - so they set out to make sure noone else can, either. They invariably fail, because there are no net.cops to enforce any such rules on UseNet; in the course of the heated flamewar that usually follows, things escalate until either Hitler or Nazis (or both) put in an appearance, at which point the thread has officially lost all relevance. People scream at each other a bit more, then give up and go home. Bleah. "Keep your brains up top; don't be a net.cop." This has mutated, in true UseNet fashion, to encompass *any* continuing thread; if you mention Hitler or Nazis out of the blue, the thread is sure to die irrelevantly soon (and, incidentally, you've lost the argument, whatever it was)... and every continuing thread on UseNet *must* contain such a reference sooner or later. Invoking Rule #4 deliberately in hopes of ending a thread, however, is doomed to failure (Quirk's Exception)...

UseNet Rules #n: No firm info at the present time is available on just what the other UseNet Rules #n are. However, at a guess, they include: --

Rule #nonumber: There are no hard-and-fast Rules on UseNet, only Guidelines, which are more or less strictly enforced (and differ) from group to group; this is why it's generally wise to read any group for a bit before ever posting to it.
Rule #0: *There* *is* *no* *C*b*l*. There *is*, however, a net-wide conspiracy designed solely to lead Dave Hayes (q.v.) to believe that there is a C*b*l. Corollary: *There* *are* *no* *pods*.
Rule #9: It's *always* September, *somewhere* on the Net. Dave Fischer's Extension: 1993 was The Year September Never Ended [so far, there doesn't seem to be much evidence he's wrong...]
Rule #17: Go not to UseNet for counsel, for they will say both `No' and `Yes' and `Try another newsgroup'.
Rule #2: (John Gilmore): "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."
Rule #108: (from the soc.motss FAQ): "What will happen to me if I read soc.motss?" "In general, nothing. (You may be informed or infuriated, of course; but that's a standard Usenet hazard.)"
Rule #666: Old alt groups never die. They don't fade away nicely, either.
Rule #7-B: There is no topic so thoroughly covered that noone will ever bring it up again.
Rule #90120: Applying your standards to someone else's post *will* result in a flamewar.
Rule #1: Spellling and grammer counts. So do grace, wit, and a sense of humor (the latter two are different), as well as a willingness to meet odd people, but these are lesser considerations.
Rule #x^2: FAQs are asked frequently. Get used to them.
Rule #29: no rational discourse can happen in a thread cross-posted to more than two newsgroups.
Rule #6: (Eddie Saxe): don't post to misc.test unless you understand the consequences.
Rule #547: (Arne Adolfsen): When people know they're wrong they resort to ad hominems.
Rule #37: (Faisal Nameer Jawdat): Read the thread from the beginning, or else.
Rule #5: (Reimer's Reason): Nobody ever ignores what they should ignore on Usenet.
Rule $19.99 (Brad `Squid' Shapcott): The Internet *isn't* *free*. It just has an economy that makes no sense to capitalism.
Rule #3: ("Why 3?" "Because we felt like it"): For every opinion there is at least one equally loud and opposing opinion; sometimes stated as: Rule #27 (Gary Lewandowski): "In cyberspace, *everyone* can hear you scream." And for completeness' sake:
Rule #4: (Godwin's Rule) Any off-topic mention of Hitler or Nazis will cause the thread it is mentioned in to an irrelevant and off-topic end very soon; every thread on UseNet has a constantly-increasing probability to contain such a mention.
Quirk's Exception: Intentional invocation of this so-called "Nazi Clause" is ineffectual. Case's Corollary: If the subject is Heinlein or homosexuality, the probability of a Hitler/Nazi comparison being made becomes equal to one. - net.legends FAQ

Appendix B: Addendums, Commentary, and Miscellaneous

1. Bentsen's Defense

For some, there is another way around Godwin's Law:

"Not this time. I know Mike Godwin. Mike Godwin is a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Mike Godwin."

This, of course, only applies to friends of Mike Godwin. The originator of this rule, Earl Cooley III (shiva@io.com), is one of those people. If you have to ask, you don't apply. I don't apply, so don't feel bad.

Note that this was named after Senator Lloyd Bentsen's "You're no Jack Kennedy" line from the 1988 vice-presidential debates.

And the original usage can be found in 3b09d2e6.79411309@news.supernews.com

2. Godwin's Commentary

Godwin actually wrote a short article for Wired Magazine on the Law back in 1994 :

The article is actually more about the power and danger of memes (thought-viruses) than about Godwin's Law itself, but it's worthwhile reading for anybody who actually got this far into the FAQ.

3. Author's Note on the Holocaust

Over the years, I have received several emails regarding this FAQ regarding the Holocaust itself, either disputing the holocaust or the numbers listed in this FAQ. I'd just like to make it clear that I don't have any particular desire to debate these points; this FAQ is meant to point out and explain a quirk of human nature, not to codify the history of World War II.

4. Additional Corollaries

There have been many additional corollaries and otherwise related rules created since the net.legends FAQ codified them, and/or missed in that FAQ. Those that have been brought to the author's attention:

Stead's Law (named for Lew Stead of alt.pagan fame): Any discussion between more than 2 Pagans will eventually come around to Christianity.

- Reported by Donal Brewich <donal@brewich.com> - More information regarding its history would be appreciated.

-- Copyright 1999-2003, Tim Skirvin http://www.killfile.org/faqs/godwin.faq

As you know, I like old government issue propaganda. And I surf the web. So sometimes I get lucky, I find things like this

http://digital.lib.umn.edu/IMAGES/reference/swhp/

It is the government's various attempts in the 1940s to stamp out sexual diseases.










The end.

What are the implications of this for my life?

If your astrological sign is totally destroyed (even recognizing that I was actually born while a different sign was behind the sun -- I know that the axis tilt or something has shifted the signs by about a month), does this mean you have no future in the universe?

On the comedy note, I just wanted to point out that I can see about three weeks of good material regarding the strange need to have reporters standing outside during a hurricane. This is why we need robots. I think that we could have a lot more fun with a very lightweight robot. He could be tossed around by the wind and no one would care. He could even get sucked up, and then 24 hours later someone could find him and check out his recording of the event. I guess that might be really expensive, but we did already land a man on the moon. Let's put a robot with a video camera in a hurricane!

Secondly, this hurricane was pretty weak. I hope this means that the next warning will not be heeded. Then hilarity can ensue. People can be dumb, or so I hear. If nothing else, this leaves open the opportunity for a Jack or Kelly Hurricane to destroy us. That will probably keep anyone from blaming Latin America for this destruction. Although, if we get to M and someone names it Mohammed, there could be some problems.

Well, I'll probably post again before I leave. If you are in DC and want to be invited to dinner with my crew (which is basically displaced Richmonders and C-ville-ians (Civilians?, C-villains?) then shoot me an email at my email address with your phone number, and I will call you once I get the weekend minutes on my cellphone.

Capuchin monkeys can spot raw deals. Probably why you don't see many monkeys in organized religions, or in fact, worshiping anything.

Go here.

Here is a teaser.

Hurricane FAQ: Why don't we try to destroy tropical cyclones by nuking them.

You should be reading Diesel Sweeties everyday, of course.

John: Mr. Smith, welcome. I’m Francis Damon, executive partner. This is John Hamlinson, managing associate. And, of course, Kennard Chamberlain, the senior member of the firm.
David: Hello.
Tom: Sit down, sit down. I trust your flight was alright?
David: Yes, sir. It was great.
John: Daniel? You were one of the top in your class at Harvard--
David: *The* top in my class, sir.
John: That’s why you’re here.
Bob: Dan? We like to think of this firm as a big family.
Tom: We’d like you to be part of our family.
David: Well, thank you, sir. Thank you.
Bob: Our offer. [passes an envelope over] I think that you’ll find that it far exceeds any of your other offers.
Tom: Dan, as a member of this firm, you’ll be one of the elite. A life of privilege will be yours.
Bob: Dan? We would like *YOU* to give us a blow job.
John: We would be very proud to have you give us a blow job.
Tom: You are our man.
David: [long pause] A b-blow, a blow job?
John: You’ll have a very bright future.
Bob: Country club membership, a house in Glen Ross Estates just across the way from me, a brand new Mercedes--you pick the color.
David: I’m-I’m sorry. A-a blow job??
Bob: Dan? Look out that window. Ninety lawyers work at this firm; most of ‘em come to work, never make more than $45,000 in a year. You would be in the top two percent in the country.
Tom: --And that’s just in the first year. I'm sorry, Kennard, continue.
David: I-I-I-I’m sorry. I-I-It’s...uh, okay, um, it’s the blow job. Uh, I’m a lawyer.
Tom: And we’re one of the largest law firms in the country, yeah.
Bob: Dan, you would have a beautiful house, in a growing community, I know you wanna have childr--
David: O-okay...please...sir. I feel very privileged to be meeting with you. But, I-I don’t know--
Bob: Alright, hold on, Dan. Gentlemen, if I could?
Bob: Dan, I went to school with your father. [pause] Okay, maybe we’re hitting you with a lot of things here. Let me try to explain--we want a really good blow job, one worthy of your caliber.
David: But-but I--
Bob: Talk to your wife, take some time to think about it.
John: Not *too* long. [laughing]
David: I-I was the f-first in my class.
Bob: Uh-huh.
David: In *LAW.* I was the first in my class in *law.*
Bob: Well, it should be a very good blow job then. We will await your answer.

Having finally realized that it takes as much time to get to Brooklyn as it does to get to Columbia, perhaps I will be more willing to go to shows and concerts over there. I was over to check out a washie's new digs and I started putting together the time issue when I left at 10:05 and ended back at my front door at 10:35.

Anyways, here's my attempt at a bit. Strangely, every time I go to Brooklyn, people point out what part of Manhattan they can see from their balcony or bedroom window or something. "It's a little hazy, but you can see the Statute of Liberty on a clear day" "Gee, there's the X building" I live in the Village. I don't know if I like all these people staring at me all the time. I just feel strange when I open my blinds. I know there are probably 200 Brooklyn residents pointing towards me at that moment, telling an out of town friend that they can just make out my face. And all this pointing must really give Long Island an inferiority complex. Unless it likes being ignored. In which case, it already had one. I was considering trying to tell guests that I could see part of Brooklyn from my window, but honestly, I can't. Which makes me think that maybe there is some kind of giant one way mirror set up in the East River. Like people 100 years ago just hated looking out their window and seeing Brooklyn when they were working in the city. They wanted to see the City like they could when they were home! So Hallburton came in, laid the foundation, buried Jimmy Hoffa, and then set up this screen to just block out Brooklyn. It probably doubled shorefront property down in the Financial District. Lord knows it made Brooklyn even less relevant in my life. Except for the ..

In a hypothetical world, let's imagine that an invading force takes control of the land that I once lorded over. They then place a reward on my head for an amount that no one in my country could have privately amassed. Let's say $15 million dollars. What would I want do? First off, if I had spent years putting my face up on billboards and other signs, I would not want to go out in public.

Secondly, since there are 150,000 foreigners looking for me. Maybe, just maybe, I would want to get the HELL OUT.

Have you seen these new ads encouraging people to respect the english language? No? Well, I know people who are upset with the Got Milk question. As if the ideal English language is something worth fighting for in this day and age. Don't you have something better you could worry about? Who put Webster up on a pedestal? What did he ever do that really earned him street cred with you? And doesn't he keep adding words and things? Why can't you change the accepted structure of words/ Why can't there be different strokes for different folks? I know that wasn't Webster, but it was close enough in my book.

I probably only yell about this because I can't spell. I only write these entries with such a prolific vocabulary because there is an automatic spell checker that underlines any suspect word with a horrid yellow line. But I also talk big. But talking is only a part of the battle. I always failed to really perform in foreign language classes. I spent years with English and I have no clue. What makes you think I am going to be able to spell pants in Spanish? I don't even know how to spell pantalones. (The spell checker says pantaloons).

Again, what good are we really doing when we fight to preserve sentence structure or reward 10 year old home schooled kids for learning the entire dictionary? It's not like Jesus ever went around correcting other people's grammar. I don't remember a single parable about the way that the spellchecker will get easy access into heaven. In fact, Jesus didn't even speak English. Who is all high and mighty now? You're speaking a language that wasn't good enough for the son of god. Also, have you ever LOOKED at old English? Doesn't that suck? What makes you think people like me can't make something even better. Can't you imagine some grammarian sitting around with Hobbes talking about the absolute NEED to have an E at the end of old? He's going "Good, lord, syre. Ye childreen wilst be unabel to reed the Holey Biblie" or something else insane like that. You know he was an idiot. And how far have we really come? You're fighting to keep the system the same because you are scared of change. It's not surprising, you were beaten with a ruler while you learned your ABCs. You don't want to learn anything new.

But I'm not saying you need to learn anything new. You just need to back off. As I said before, aren't there better things you can do with your time? Where is the love anyways? Do you remember ANY classic ending where the person who corrected all his friends' grammar throughout the film really earned the good life? No. That doesn't happen. There's nothing there. The dictionary ends with Zebra, my life is going to end with something more exciting.

Basically. we sat in tubes, we moved with the river, we used rope to hold ourselves in place, we sat on rocks, we stood on beaches, we ate our subs, we drank everything, we saw other people, we even got some sun.

Here is the funny story. Within 100 feet of our final landing, everything broke down. A top to our cooler was lost to the rapids, forcing judson to abandon his tube and begin a long chase of the bright red top. Of course, I could not observe this and since he no longer updates his blog, the story of the chase will most likely be lost forever.

With Judson going through the rapids, an extra tube remained. This meant that I would need to get the extra tube, the cooler tube, and my own tube down the rapids on one piece. And without a top on the cooler, there could be serious problems. Each inch was a struggle. I was in tivas, unable to get into a tube, lest I lose control over the other two. So there I was, going down the rapids on my own back, my hands wrapped around the tubes, trying to keep them stacked in such a way that the top cooler would not spill our remaining sandwiches and sun burn lotion. Eventually, I made it, and was very tired. At some point, I basically punched a rock to slow myself down, leaving two small indents on my knuckles.

When i came up the bank, I was sure that Judson was dead. Then as I waited for everyone else to come through the rapids, I noticed that Mark was nowhere to be seen. When I was told that Judson had not only survived but had also retrieved the important cooler top, I thought that it would almost be ironic if Mark, the man who only needed to get himself and his own tube down the rapids, were the one to expire. Finally, minutes later, Mark finished his 100 foot journey, having been obscured from view during his own struggle to reclaim a piece of robe that had been caught on a branch.

The ride home was strangely quiet as I contemplated what parts of my body may be burned, dreamed of a shower, and imagined that my cat must have recently finished the food that I left out in the garage to get him through the day.

After the shower, Judson and I helped his friend clean our her car (since she was the DD, I thought that windex and armor all were the least we could do), and then we went to find a way to get cheap food. Jason Carey was able to hook us up even though he was less than 24 hours from his own entry into the European Theater, and then I packed myself up and left for Richmond.

Gained: Slight sunburn, two entries for journal, memories to last a year, food
Lost: Money to pay for all those things, 24 hours of time, gas for car
Misplaced: Bathing suit, it did not make it from the bathroom to my car after the shower. It will be reclaimed on Friday.
Current Music: Wilco - Box Full of Letters

Why do we care if people can dance? I have a friend who hates Justin Timberlake but always adds "But that boy can dance" as if that is some kind of triumph. "I don't really care for your friend Jack, but he can really wave!"

I know, dancing used to have some real value. I mean, you couldn't just fake your way through a rain dance! You better have some twinkle toes or else starvation and dehydration! If Electric Slide could put food on the table, you better believe no one would try and fake their way through it.

I hope I am not the only one who has seen the advertisements for the new anti-hangover capsules that are for sale out there in the real world. For some of you, perhaps it is a day of celebration. No more poor performance on the job, no more wasted Sunday mornings. As the advertisement claims, no regrets. Of course, this is hilariously misleading. As if the hangover was the only regret that ever resulted from heavy drinking. This would be like curing the portion of ebola that eats through your skin, but not the part that makes it kill you and labeling it "Ebol-aid: Go to sub-saharan Africa without fear!" or perhaps a device that gets blood out of the carpet in the trunk of your car. "Blood-out: One squirt and watch all the problems related to the blood in your trunk just melt away!"

For me, it is a sigh of relief that this technology did not come out sooner. Imagine how much harder all of my college classes would have been if I was not competing against people who suffered from extreme shortsightedness. Basically, this pill helps people who got drunk on weeknights and hurts people who did not. We are all graded on a curve. If someone who was my intellectual superior in psychobiology was also unable to resist the allure of heavy drinking, I might perform better than him because I played video games that night. But now, without the hangover, since neither of us studied, he is going to do better.

Sure, one could make the case that there are other benefits coming my way. I could have played drunken video games and started to enjoy life, but then I would not have been able to set the high score. More people will get drunk during weekdays because of the lowered total cost, and some of those people, had they not been drinking may have been studying. At parties, more people will get drunk or average drinkers will become heavy drinkers, increasing the likelihood of amusing incidents and confrontations in the morning. Without the cost of hangovers factoring into the equation, people will increase behaviors that result in other forms of regret to the point where they are maintaining the same level of regret each weekend, albeit in different areas. This could have unintended and unseen benefits for me, I just don't know at this point.

Either way, I am out of college. Future kids will face a brave new world, I think. Also, I should probably get working on that Blood-out stuff.

Excluding the last five generations, does anyone really think that if they reanimated their ancestors they would be anything but a disappointment? I mean, go back far enough and my ancestors would demand to know why I wasn't making offerings to the wood spirits! Sure, I hope that I could distract them with all the technology and eye candy of our time, but eventually they might start to connect the dots and realize that we are very different people.

Stores open on sunday! Opium isn't sold in stores! No farm! You left Europe! You speak English! Where are the leeches? You allow wiccans to live among you? You boil your water? What are all these foreigners doing here? You let women vote? You got rid of the outhouse...you POOP IN YOUR OWN HOUSE? The Christians lost control of the holy land...what the hell were the crusades for then??

Perhaps they would be pleased by somethings.

So you finally killed off the Indians! Oh, Reservations? Good enough!
Implants and birth control, you say? Works for me.
Popes are still catholic and bears still go on the woods? Some things never change!
Hold on, there are BETTER games than making a wheel go down the street with a stick?
No body believes Hobbes or Freud anymore? For the best, i guess.

Of course, the worst thing is that they will be as old as they were when they died. And probably of natural causes.

What kind of jokes would a country club comedian tell?
Golf humor, problems with servants, children getting arrested, top hats out of style, some people aren't rich enough, poor people smelling bad

What if we reanimated the founding fathers and sent them over to make democracy work in other nations? Could they handle it? What kinds of problems, besides language and culture would they run into? Would the lack of a British monarchy give them pause? Would they argue that we should rejoin Britain?

I suppose everyone has heard that Britney says she and Justin have done the nasty. I guess she had a problem with all the comedians who called her a slut and Justin gay. Turns out that Britney's a man. Stranger things have happened. And we all know that no one who can dance like Justin is heterosexual. Am I right? Eh? don't get it? You must all be retarded. Or Blind. Who else wants some? I know about your mother too, sir.

Mission for the weekend: Try a McGriddle.

Thanks to the Pop Culture Casualties for the title, I know that I am only 65 miles at this point.

Sitting on the sofa of the house of Carrolton, I can't help but consider that I am too old. First, my pillow was sitting in my car parked miles away (distance as a metaphor!) and I knew that I would have a less enjoyable sleep without a pillow. I manufactured one in a way that MacGuyver would have laughed at, I think. Secondly, I was willing to use my A/C for every trip we made in my car. Even at night! I partially blame the weak stereo system in the car, but that can't take all the blame. The ultimate problem is that I am earning money. Money burns a hole in my pocket sometimes. Law school was the first thing to distract me from spending -- the NYU law school expects you to spend 7000 dollars on entertainment, clothing, and misc. during your nine months, I spent about 1500.

So, this was to be a column about how you can tell you are getting old. You don't remember the last time you threw up for any reason. You can't remember the last time you had a nose bleed. You have a friend who acts like a mother at parties. You eat things and discuss how your body will probably react to them. You have a younger friend who keeps talking about how old they feel. You are surprised by a new joint cracking. You feel guilt when you take a cookie or sucker from the children's basket at stores and restaurants. You realize that people in college live in squaller, and you feel bad for them...and also wish they at least cleaned their bathroom.

Have an hour to myself at 2 AM last Sunday morning on the drive home from a party, I tried to think of a joke.

What kind of mail does Weird Al get?

Dear W-dog
I was listening to Pink by Aerosmith and really thought that if you changed the word to Tink, you could write a pretty accurate description of the crisis Peter Pan has with his little fairy friend. Just think about it "Tink, Wendy's not just my obsession. Tink, that's not a fair question. Tink, It's just that she's my height. And Tink, she don't glow if I turn out the light". Anyways, just wanted to let you know.
- Stan Out.
PS. I like your stuff, we should be together.

Then I wondered if Al had a form letter to reply to these people.

Dear Person X,
Thank you for your clever twist. It was great how you noticed two things and thought about putting them together. We here at Weird Al, Inc are always on the look out for movers and shakers like yourself. Unfortunately at this time, [the band's song in question] is not as recognizable as we would like it to be. If we always covered slightly outdated or obscure music, we would not enjoy the success that we do today. Thank you again for your time, and keep on rewriting words to your favorite songs. We could use the competition!
- Weird Al
PS. The Capitol Steps suck.

So, there you go. No jokes, but at least it got me thinking about making a joke about Weird Al.

They have installed a new electronic sign over Interstate 95 near Richmond. I drive by it every morning, because it is only visible in the south bound lane. Anyway, usually it is off. Once or twice a month I see a warning such as "accident 7 miles ahead" and I think that it is a pretty useful thing to have on certain occasions like these. If people know to get off the interstate earlier, the backup is smaller and everyone is happier. But today, the sign reads "Ozone advisory. Please use mass transit or carpool." I cannot think of a less appropriate time for this. How am I supposed to carpool now. I'm already on the interstate in my car.

Imagine if you were sky diving and about half way down, you got a note saying "you should have a parachute." conversely, what if people attempted to do what the sign said? I looked over at the guy in the jeep next to me in the right hand lane, rolled down my window for him, he slammed his wheel hard to the right as he jumped over to my car, his own jeep careening out of control into the woods on the left as he hangs on for dear life to my windshield, trying to work his way over to the window as i continue at 70 miles per hour. Yeah, I'm speeding, but I'm late for work. And the sooner I get there, the sooner my car stops producing ozone.

Of course, the exploding jeep is probably releasing some noxious fumes, and it turns out this guy lives in NYC, so it's going to be a long trip home tonight, but at least we are doing what the sign said.

Editor's Note, 06/26/03: Having encountered the sign again, I saw that the instructions also requested that you reduce travel. That could be useful, I suppose. It reduces the humor of my tale, but it wasn't really that funny to begin with, now was it? Perhaps a better story would have involved something that made instant carpooling mandatory. Secondly, today, i was passed by a car that happened to have the exact same "peace" bumpersticker that my sister attached to her car years ago. And it was also a black car. And the bumper sticker was on the exact same section of the bumper. Only this one was in color. I guess if my sister needed a mandatory carpool partner, this would have been the right person for the job.

Why hasn't carpooling ever caught on? Probably because no two people live in the exact same place, and even when they live very close, they do not have the exact schedule. What happens if you are asked to stay late one night to finish a project when you are also driving? Everyone else has to come pitch in? Carpooling reduces freedom. That's why mass transit is probably the way to go. It lets people feel like they retain control over their schedules. Also, you don't have to feel like you are living in a Blondie/Dagwood strip. Does anyone else notice that all the jokes are about him leaving home in the carpool? Why are there no antics that occur after work? Maybe there are, but it always seems like Dagwood's life isn't covered in a fair and balanced way. We know all about his weekends on the couch, his late night snacks, and his early morning rushes and time at the office. We even know about the evenings when his kids ask to borrow the car. But what about that trip home from the office? What about his time on the can? When was the last time he took a vacation with Blondie and we got to read about it? To the average person, you would think Blondie's catering business is the only time that she gets to leave the house. Oh well, enough of that.

In an effort to take a break from updating the website, I have instead been shuffling through all the CDs in my house in an effort to locate music that should have been in my playlist years ago, but was sadly forgotten. Hangin' Around by the Counting Crows has been the latest find, and I guess I am a better person for it. I have made the jump to m4a encoding, because mp3 was so 1998. This means that for about 18 months, I will be unable to even send a song to a PC friend without trying to explain why they can't listen to it. Maybe only 12. I really haven't done any research into it.

As I am still in the C's as of 1:44 PM. I think that this may be a long term summer project. Any particular song takes 3 minutes to listen to, and I believe we have around 600 albums in the house. I know I own more than 250 (Take that Napster!). I think I will be able to skip most of my parent's collection, but who knows? A mental breakdown and extra time are all it would take for me to rip christmas albums, I think.

Anyways, I was reading that lots of musicians are not going to allow online distribution of their songs as singles because they believe it will result in the death of an album. Hmm. I wonder, is that what is killing the album? Oh, maybe its the fact that 90% of albums released have four good songs and 6-8 fillers that fade into the distant past. I say, if these artists thing that the songs shouldn't be split up, they shouldn't bother with tracks. Sell a 60 minute mp3. See if anyone cares. People will like portions of it, hate others, and some geeks will just rip out the portions that are good and distribute those illegally. People would purchase albums if it was a great album. If only some songs are worth it, then they will just purchase the songs they like. Also, who came down from a mountain and wrote that the optimal form of music was a collect of 8-10 songs written by the same artist. I went and checked the Bible, it wasn't there. I talked to some wandering minstrels. They said they just played whatever got them paid. Mozart was the first person who said it was important to listen to his whole symphony. And also, he asked me to stop digging him up every time I had a problem with today's musicians. He had done his time, it was time to catch up on sleep. Anyways, I don't remember the Beatles complaining when they made money off singles. Also, if anything, current music has killed off the single. Can anyone get a single? Other than import it from Europe or Japan and pay 12 bucks? If I was Radiohead, I would sit the hell down and stop writing songs that no one can understand. If your basic market is dependent on potheads who are going to be too lazy to take your CD out of the player until it ends, then maybe you are in the wrong business. But, what do I know? They're rich, I'm not. Either way, I'd punch them in the gut if I found them passed out in an alley behind my house.

Leave it to Fark to respond. They found this link and are having this discussion.

What keeps us under control? I think part of it is the weather. There are lots of types of weather that calm or suppress the savage beast. No one wants to do much when a blizzard hits. I've lived in New York City after it gets more than 8 inches of snow. People are not out for their health. Well, unless they need to get a new lung. They'll go out. But no one is going out because they want to live like an animal. Society and everything else looks pretty good when it is keeping you from having to hunt your own food.

But, there are also times when I have seen weather drive people the other way. You know, at some point, when you think it is all over, you just say to yourself, since there are no consequences, I may as well go crazy. A particularly volatile combination of circumstances appear to be whenever you combine heavy rain and young people. I watched Woodstock. It is documented. College towns know the risk, I bet. In fact, just yesterday I was attempting to make my way from my home to another apartment when the skies opened up. I have seen fire and I've seen rain, but this rain was heavy. This wasn't cats and dogs, this was big cats and husky dogs. The city sewer system was not designed for this kind of rain. Streets and parking lots were instantly becoming rivers and oceans, depending on the salt content of the concrete. I was safely in the car, doing 10 in a 25 mph zone.

Funny thing about the rain. It slows down people in cars, but drastically increases the speed of your average pedestrian. Rain is the great equalizer. Also, I hear it is a great neutralizer, but that is just because some of my friends are amateur chemists. So, your average person, when caught in an unexpected shower without a rain protection system. I.E. an umbrella or a poncho will respond in several ways. If you are in a big city, you look for a person to gouge you with a umbrella designed to last 35 minutes. If you are in an amusement park, you look for the nearest poncho with mouse ears. If you are in the suburbs, you try and figure how to best hold your keys so that you can push them into your car lock while still running.

But this average response is not the response of kids. Why? Probably because getting wet does not reduce their enjoyment of the rest of the day. They weren't going to be doing anything anyways. There is no opportunity cost. So kids will stick around at a concert like woodstock where the more sensible adult at a outdoor classic rock show would call it a night if the humidity hits 50%. We almost expect kids at college to get muddy, sliding down a hill at a moments notice or throwing mud at some one else in the pit. We accept it and it doesn't frighten us, because it doesn't happen where we live. No one fears that 50 kids from the local college will drive out and do this in our yard. It's far away. It's distant. But, during this storm, I was scared.

As I already said, I was driving to a party. My slow progress was further impeded by a stoplight at an intersection where I wanted to turn left. As I sat there, my car shaking as its paint job struggled against the effects of erosion, I noted a pack of about nine college students wandering down the sidewalk, sans umbrellas. These people had obviously not checked the Weather channel before going out, and they must have left more than three hours ago, because that was when the thunder and clouds had rolled over the mountains. Anyways, they were soaked. It was already 10 pm, so most of the day was done. Three of the men had taken off their shirts, probably to reduce surface area. I do not blame them for that. But one of the dudes had obviously gone off the edge.

He was screaming at my car, splashing around in the storm drain, falling to all fours to dunk his head in the mighty stream. I think it was when he pulled his head from the stream when he and I first made eye contact. The screaming had really been directed at all of the four cars, much more general and incoherent. But as he stood up, he started screaming some kind of ancient curse at my car. The words themselves might have been babbling, but they still filled me with fear.

Here was a guy with nothing left to lose. He was soaked to the bone, probably miles from his apartment, his girlfriend, if she was with the group, was probably in a sour mood and probably blamed him for not having a car. From his perspective, if the last hour was indicative of the future, the world was ending. Might as well have a ball. Might as well kill and feast on the brains of some unsuspecting motorist. This would also potentially solve the girlfriend situation.

(Don't know where to go with this yet. Perhaps end by pointing out that we decided to turn right so as to escape him. Perhaps a hypothetical where I shot him. Perhaps something where he actually jumps on the hood of my car. Perhaps it turns out to be someone I used to know. Perhaps something else.)

Second observation. Sibling relationships. Younger kid gets things at an earlier age. Big point, there is an age where you as the older child would be old enough to stay at home without a babysitter, but because you have a younger sibling that you are still too young to care for, your parents continue to get a babysitter. Hypothetically, it may just be someone a year or two older than you at this point. Like, you are 15 and they get a 16 year old because that person could drive everyone to the hospital, etc. Awkward right?

(no clue where the funny is there - perhaps if your parents hire your friend, and he sends you to bed early)

Consider how much kids learn in the first few days of life. Even throwing them into the woods, they would learn perception. What happens if you keep them on LSD for the first 15 years of life? Sure, you'd go to jail, but what would happen to the kid? Drugs for that long probably have developmental problems, but grant me this assumption. What if you came to after growing up thinking that your perceptions on LSD were reality and suddenly, the walls stopped bleeding? So, not much of a joke yet, but maybe I can work with that.

I mean, you can't just throw the kid into the woods, since they would die within the first week. I don't care what the Spartans claimed to do in their books. Our books claim that women are from Venus. Should I take that seriously? Sounds like something was slipped into John Gray's head.

Ladies. Ladies. Do you ever get calls from men when they are already at some noisy bar? Are they sweet-talking you, telling you to come on out? Are you amazed that they are able to hear you so clearly from what is normally a very loud place? Well, guess what? They are talking to you while they are using the bathroom! Yeap, it's a dirty little secret. Urinals can be operated with one hand, the cell phone in the other. Yes, I know it is disgusting, but I have seen it too many times. You must know it to be true. Sure, maybe they are out front smoking a cigarette. But you hear the muffled sound of the music, not traffic, right? There is only only place with the acoustics for that in a club. You've been to the club before, you know the club owners haven't set up any other private rooms.

But the question becomes, what can you do? Maybe you want to flirt with him. You certainly can't call him on it. You are too far away, he will deny and you can't get any proof on him.

So yeah, I currently have no funny advice, nor a conclusion, but it is a strange observation. I am going to work with it. At least now it is written down. Perhaps it will be more of a "Here is a man who, when he needs to use the restroom, happens to think about you. What have you done to earn this connection in his brain? Are you sending out the right signals? Wouldn't you rather have him call you whenever he is looking at diamonds?" Eh, so that is where that joke stands.

Having totally failed to write anything funny in the last three weeks, one had to wonder if I will ever be funny again.

I park everyday. I wonder if there is anything funny about parking. People have already made hundreds of jokes about rush hour traffic. but what about all these places that have two hour parking? what about those honor park places. Who was the first person who decided that was the best investment for their land? Just pave it, and charge people to leave something there? Not even a tower, one level. No reason to build something that sells something. You must dream about smaller cars. SUVs must be your worst nightmare. they are already pushing the limit of your average space. What happens when the hummer 3 comes out? Can you charge the owners for taking up 1.2 spaces? Is it like Southwest Airline? You transfer costs to the fat cars? I don't know if I want to be in a profession where I get excited when I see someone driving up in a motorcycle.

I am about six hours into a seven hour train ride home at this point. I was given an assigned seat when I got on the train at Penn Station. It is 20. An Aisle seat. There are no plugs on this car, so I went up to watch Comedian in the Cafe car for two hours (DVD would have killed the battery so that I wouldn't have been able to listen to music for the rest of the time).

When I returned, the person in the seat next to me (who is still there...I hope he isn't reading this...I will make the font smaller, and then make it bigger at the last second before I save it)...this person had taken over my seat. Sure, I was gone for two hours, but I had left my pillow and trash. I would have been fine with it, except he said "Oh, I thought you had gotten off" What? Like, I understand the taking over the seat, he wanted the room, but to pretend that the items I had left in the seat had been abandoned irked me to some small degree. Was he planning on taking the pillow with him? Did he think that I had brought it all the way to the train just to leave it here? I was trying to imagine this small vending machine next to the coke machine in Penn Station. One dollar, disposable pillow. Use it and throw it away. Very American.

They do give out pillows on the train, but they are tiny and weak stuff. you assume they change the little covers each time, but who really knows, they may dip them in asbestos before handing them out. I have no control. No local TV station is going to do a report on them, because by the time they break the story, they are in another state. And it might be considered bad form to take away a news story from another affiliate. So, given the fact that my pillow was HUGE and fluffy, I can understand his desire to view it as abandoned property as he attempted to sleep on his little one. But His desire for the pillow should have also put him on notice that this pillow was probably too valuable to just be left.

If I were rick enough to just leave big pillows on trains, would I really be riding coach? I hear they have plugs AND TVs in business class. why would I want them to pick the movies? the last time I was in business class, they showed "the Tuxedo" staring Jennifer Love Hewitt and Jackie Chan. I had two DVDs in my bag...but i HAD already seen them...so I watched it. surprisingly, it was awful. Killing the bad guy involved kicking an insect into his mouth. Why is it always acceptable to kill the villian with his own evil machine or device, but just walking up to him and shooting him would be morally suspect? First, as a spy, the fact that they failed to kill you with that device tells you that perhaps you wouldn't be able to kill them with it, and second, after you shoot them, you could always throw them into the shark tank and CLAIM that you killed them in an ironic way. Who is going to question James Bond?

Finally, we are going to get into the train station at 3 pm. It is physically impossible for the train to do any different. Yet people have taken their luggage down. they are excited to be near Ashland, I guess. The guy in Window Seat 19 is basically good to go. That means he may ask me to stop soon so he can preemptively use the train restroom. the headphones are the only reason I would really need to worry about this. No headphones, I could just move in any position and let him get by...with headphones, the computer needs to remain within 30 inches of my face. Do I really have any control here? The things really do end up owning you, I guess.

So, this hasn't been great comedy. A baby has been wailing for the last 45 minutes. I think her parents are calling her Amanda. The headphones do not block out the really high pitch ones, so every two or three minutes, I am reminded that someone is unhappy. Do you think there is an optimal level of crying behavior? Like if your genes predispose you to cry 24/7, do you both suffer from malnutrition (because crying take injury) and increase the likelihood you will be left on a mountain outside the gates of Sparta? If you do not cry at all, do you get even less food and risk getting left behind (because no one remembers you are there?) I would probably call that dissertation "Getting the grease: The Optimal Strategy for the Wheel with regards to the appearance of Squeakiness"" Adam, PhD. Or not. Life would be tough knowing that I had created that title and that some evolutionary biology class would read it and weep.

I think i've covered all the behavior I am willing to talk about at this point. Everyone is a jerk in coach, perhaps a real world proof that rats become more aggressive the higher the population density. Still, not too bad. I have never had a problem with them. I sometimes wish that I could find a time where no other people are even riding in my car. Just to feel like I am rich. this train left at 7:40 AM, which meant that it only had 8 people in this car when we left, but then, when it was 10 in Philly, lots of people joined the party. the only solution would be to leave at 5 AM on a train that can travel 400 miles an hour as it travels due west to better keep up with the time zones . Oh...I remember, they call those planes. So, basically, I want a private, supersonic jet. How about it, science?

I write this only because one day it seems like it might be useful to use in standup comedy. There are currently two quarters at the bottom of my toilet bowl. My roommate was trying to get sand out of a bag by shaking it into the toilet, and the quarters fell out and into the water. He refuses to get them out, and since I have peed in there since it happened, I am going to let them stay. I know what you are thinking, but for some reason, the flushes fail to remove them. I think they are too low and heavy. The toilet was not designed to flush them by themselves. Yes, I think I know what it will take to have them go down the drain. They probably have 14-16 hours left. Anyways, it is now part of the world wide web. This way, I will have a small chance of remembering this.

It was very hard to use the bathroom with two little GWs staring up at me.
Future plan. Kennedy?

So, to take a break, i went ahead and made an entry for each of the photoshop contests on fark.com today.
Yeah, I have done zero work since my last post.

The themes were:
Three Celebrating Soccer Players who just won some big European match, so they get beer
(Below are Rejected MS Word Helper Icons and Charlton Heston)

You can click on the links to see the original. I may try to move these into the humor section when exams end.
As you can see, this is from the "Alive" DVD cover. since it was about soccer players, I felt it was funny to combine the two. (If you go find the actual DVD at Amazon, you will notice that I had to change a lot to make it look so awesome)



Rejected MS Word Helper Icons - Instead of the little paperclip, I went with Jesus



and Charlton Heston - I shot him with Mr. Moore (you will notice how Mr Moore appears to be behind some of the reeds, that is from my slowly growing skill at manipulating images)

So, I stumbled across this article called SARS Panic 'Pleases Terrorists'

"The panic caused by the deadly Sars virus has "gladdened the hearts" of terrorists, according to a British medical expert."

It goes on to make some quick points about how some experts estimate that sufficiently large viral attacks could devistate a nation's health care system. Nothing really amazing, but maybe the public doesn't have the brains to connect the dots about why people fear big weapons. Anyways, I decided to do a potential future headlines entry regarding other things that could make the terrorists happy. I basically believe that you could replace the word terrorist with Satan and you would get the same impact. Satan and the terrorists both like bad things, where as Americans all like good things!

Poor test performance by Mrs. Jones' third grade class "pleases terrorists"
"I told the kids that each A would make the world a safer place for democracy, but I think that Fox News has really failed these kids' families by not explaining the key link between Iowa Test performance and terrorist morale. These kids are learning for themselves, they have a duty to get excellent grades. In fact, the duty may be so great, I will probably need to start teaching them how to cheat." said Mrs Jones to no one in particular.

Rain delay at Cubs game "certainly doesn't help the war against terrorism"
Longtime fan Jim said "you've got 20,000 families here...most of us were planning on fighting terrorism later tonight after the game. But they keep telling us that they might start the game later, so we sit here and wait. I mean, I was planning on getting home by 7:30, eating dinner, and then putting in two hours helping out with the war. Now, it looks like dinner might not be over until 9. I have a big meeting tomorrow, and I'm not going to lose my job just to help out with the war. That's exactly what the terrorists would have wanted. I think I can speak for everyone here when I say that rain is the tool of bad and evil men. When will we finally be able to live in peace?"

Rush hour traffic in major cities "a delight to Osama"
Transportation Secretary Joe said "When people are afraid, then we lose another key battle. Rush Hour traffic is, like the Battle of the Bulge in WWII, going to be make it or break it time for the good guys. Either we invent new ways to go to work, or we prescribe everyone a Rush Hour dose of prozac to easy tensions. People need to work together. Remember, each time you honk, some young, unemployed male in the Middle East walks into a terrorist recruiting station."

Small child's tantrum in the supermarket "helps further terrorist goals"
Seventeen people ended up seeking counseling after hearing the cries of a baby echoing through the supermarket early last morning. "I was pretty sure that the baby was crying because another terrorist attack was happening here in Bismark. All of a sudden, I couldn't breathe, I was afraid, I curled up into a little ball and waited for the end. But then, hours later, I think, I got up and thanked God that Washington politicians were still protecting me. Anyways, I am currently in a class action with the other patrons, we think that the store intentionally created an environment designed to give aid and comfort to the enemy by allowing such "attacks" to occur without any means to safely combat them." said store patron Jim, "maybe if the government would just order the execution of every baby under the age of two, we could finally start to win this war. People did it in the Bible, and we ended up getting Jesus, so I think it's a great idea. Those terrorists will HATE it if Jesus comes back"

Cancellation of Just Shoot Me met with stiff upper lip as public fights urge to aid terrorists with sadness
David Spade came on national TV to remind people that, not only had Fox stepped forward to continue to show reruns of the hit show, but that NBC had an entire line up set for the fall that would more specifically target and combat terrorism. "Must See or the Terrorists Will Win" TV is set for Wednesday and Friday nights next year, the two nights NBC believes are the times when terrorists benefit the most from viewer dissatisfaction. "NBC is committed to doing its part to stop terrorism. Talks are already underway to simply rebroadcast Fox News instead of our own, to show everyone that we are committed to allowing an Australian war hawk manipulate the public in order to make everyone safer."

Paper cuts, stubbed toes, and charlie horses: How terrorists win every day
Join us tonight for a hardhitting look at how your clumsy friend may actually be a self-terrorist. While the government can't lock her up yet, there are numerous proposals that may soon allow your friend to go to jail. "Going to the hospital with a disease or injury that was not possibly the result of terrorism is a waste of society's time and energy. These people need to be killed before they endanger us all with their heart disease, high cholesterol, and sore backs. While there are experts that say the stress of the government's warnings may contribute to illnesses, I don't think I've seen Fox saying that it is true, so I am inclined to speculate these people are developing these diseases because they just don't hate arabs enough." said someone else.

A third arm.

Sure, I'd be called a freak, but everyone would know me as the freak who gets stuff done. Seriously. a lot of people would probably be like, gee...I wouldn't want to get a drink with adam, but man, I'd want him to be my tag team partner in wrestling.

I just don't know though, there do seem to be some negatives. I've never heard of a triple breasted suit. I'm not making enough money for a custom fitted suit. I may have a third arm, but it isn't made out of money...actually, that is probably what I could really use. A third arm made out of money. I'd go into an expensive restaurant, some guy would be complaining about the price, and I'd just laugh. Sure, I am still missing the leg, but when I walk out, I'd still have two of my arms. Course, if I were smart, I would just go in with the third arm and keep giving blood. Then, as she finishes, snatch it, and go hit vegas with my blood money.

You don't want puns? Go read the New Yorker. Puns bought my mom a new house. Puns put food on the table, and lastly, puns make you forget that I started off this joke wishing that I had a third arm, like some kind of stupid freak.

You know what I hated about all the job interviews for this gig. It was the interview. Each time, you always get the same question from Teresa down in recruiting "So why do you want to be a comic." and I NEVER had the best answer. I eventually had to just reach down inside myself, look her straight in the eye and say "My father was...umm..killed by a heckler when I was a boy, and now I wish to avenge his death so that he may finally find peace in the afterlife." Cause you and I both know, you can't just say "I'm doing it because I think it will increase my chances with women that I meet."

Why do so many people read for fun? Lots of people talk about sitting back with a good book, relaxing, and having a little adventure in their head. I don't personally read for fun. I'll read the newspaper, glance at a magazine, but I haven't read a full 'novel' in probably 7 months. Maybe it is also because I read lawyer things. But anyways. How come almost no one reads for survival. And I don't mean to make a joke about that new book and television show "worst case senario" where they tell you how to survive if a bear comes out of a taxi and starts eating with you. That's a great show, don't get me wrong. It's no Midgets pulling an airplane in a race against animals doing the same thing, but they both seem to belong on Fox.

anyways, people sometimes flip through those books for fun. They tell you little things about how to properly roll out of a moving vehicle. Its all great fun, because you can read it without being reminded of your friend Joe, who was killed because he couldn't successfully build a set of wings out of three packs of duct tape. Yeah, I liked those books years ago, when they were called MacGyver. These books are like the show, but without all the lovable characters and dangerous villians. Instead, you just have Mr Smith suddenly confronted with a bear. I don't know Mr Smith, sure he's human like me, but I don't know anything about it. Maybe I should be rooting for the bear? What if the show had a young Pol Pot, and it was teaching him how to survive? Is it really good to have this kind of information available? Wouldn't our fight against terrorism be easier if Osama DIDN'T know how to treat himself for hyperthermia?

People need to wake up and realize they are creating a market for something that only serves terrorists. I looked through the next couple weeks of the show. You've got...let's see....how to avoid being struck by lightening. Okay, pretty harmless, oh wait, what's this. How to survive leaping off a roof in a manner that also allows you to avoid law enforcement officials. Does that sound like something we should be beaming into the middle east? I can't even read the next one. Its written in one of those god-less languages! Al-Jezerra's got competition. We've met the enemy, and his name is reality programming.

So yeah, that sucks. And for all of you that want to join me, I've gotten involved in one of those good, old fashioned book burnings. We're going to meet in the middle of Washington Square park, then go out and set fire to things. Hopefully, some of those books will end up burning IN the fire, instead of ending up in enemy hands.

But, like I was saying, nobody really reads for survival. You'd have to be pretty abnormal to need "How to survive like the A-Team Did, only in a way that allows you to hurt people in America instead of help them" Man, this book is going to get burned first. So yeah, you and me. Let's be honest. We aren't going to be in a helicopter disaster anytime soon. And if we were, our survival instinct would really only help us stay more regular if you know what I'm saying. For you and me, disaster is nature's fiber.

But do we EVER read about how to really stay alive realistically? Some people read those health books, like from Dr Atkins, god-rest-his soul, but nobody reads books about not falling down and killing yourself on your way to work. No body reads the manual to your car. Nobody reads the warnings on your prescriptions. Most people in this city don't even read the cross-walks. Am I right, am I right. We'll see whose rich enough to drive a car in this city. Actually, I shouldn't say that. I've got a pretty big following in the taxi community. Just wait, if I'm feeling good, I'll close with my "You all ever notice that people complain about how taxi drivers can't speak english, but the only time people are taking a cab home is when they are totally wasted and unable to form a complete sentence about where they actually live?" That one KILLS at the cab driver conventions when I get called over to perform in India or something. Sorry, that stereotype is required by law. Don't yell at me. Go yell at Bloomberg.

So yeah, no body reads the stuff that could actually help them out. We're all about ignoring it and pressing forward. I guess we sort of have this problem. We haven't had enough centuries where the difference between such reading was life and death. Like, if you were in 1600, you can't go down to the local store and buy a vaccine for the bubonic plague. Reading the newspaper wouldn't have told you that using leeches isn't actually going to do anything but expose you to more infections. For the longest time, reading was more likely to get you KILLED, because people were righting some messed up stuff. It was all pseudo-science. People touching bumps in the head, handing you a liquid that was going to be a cure for your problems with a little pamplet that PROVED it was going to be great if you would just buy a lifetime supply. No, the people who didn't read to survive were the ones who DID survive.

Go further back, look at the Spanish Inquisition. I'm sure they killed a lot of women who couldn't read, because let's be honest, no one was going to take the time to teach witches how to read. But outside of that. Who did they have a problem with? People who had read some other version of the bible. if you couldn't even read the version of the bible that the state told you to read, then you were fine. I mean, sure, the leeches thing was a threat if you went to someone who could read for medical advice. But the people who could read faced that threat too! So, readers were having all sorts of problems. Illteracy wasn't just cool, it was also a smart survival instinct.

So that is why I think that people don't tend to read for survival. For the longest time, we rewarded laziness when it came to reading. Study were saying all sorts of crazy things about what you need to do to stay healthy, news papers were tricking people into starting wars. So the people who really liked to read didn't survive long enough to have like 8 million kids. And those that couldn't read did. And that tendency got refined and refined in our genes. Jesus? He liked to read. No kids. No wonder we have so much trouble. I mean, people aren't even carrying the bible around with them. They've just got WWJD. FOUR LETTERS. That's all they can handle. Also, its on a bracelet. God forbid you need to read a whole sentence, let alone MEMORIZE ALL FOUR OF THEM. Better keep this around, in case I forget. (points to wrist)....Hmmmm....what is this again? And while you are standing there in the middle of the park trying to remember if there was someone named Jake...four people who read are getting killed in China for wanting to read more. Although, yeah, maybe its just some kind of need to get through it fast. Like, you've only got 3 seconds before you are about to have sex with a donkey, and if you can't get through the bracelet fast enough, god is going to be pissed with you. I mean, if you are like me and a slow reader, you'd be lighting the donkey's cigarette by the time you even got to the part of the sentence about jesus. Ladies, just so you know. It takes me 20 minutes to read a word, so you don't even have to worry...unless you can't do a good donkey impression.

Where was I? I think like I have beat this into the ground. What do we have? Years where reading was a stupid waste of time. Well, okay, most reading today is still a stupid waste of time. Until they put out a behind the scenes tell all book about the West Wing. That's going to be useful. But there are some serious warnings that get put out all the time by companies and government people that are actually trying to save our lives. Sure, we get some of them pounded into our head. "Don't stab yourself", "Face does not belong in microwave", "Never tell a woman the truth about her outfit, the relationship, or your feelings." Am I right? Man, that normally kills at the lesbian conventions. And no, they don't happen on the island of Lesbos, for all of you hoping you'd catch me in another stereotype joke. Those conventions happen in San Francisco.

But there are a bunch that people obviously forget. Like those people who watch Jackass or professional wrestling. Or those people who end up getting old. That's a killer mistake right there. I can say that, cause I know I don't have any old people in the audience. I'm on the AARP's blacklist. Right, another convention. My live action "start beating the crap out of old people and taking their money" piece was not well recieved. Also, most of the old people only carried like $50 dollars in cash, so it just wasn't worth it to me.

-----
god, i am tired. here are other portions for this joke
masturbation makes you go blind.
Blind people are killed all the time / never killed, depending on what story I want to make up
sure warnings could be on TV, but they would push out the "The more you know" NBC public service announcements, which also help idiots learn not to be as racist, sexist, and jingoistic as Fox wants them to be.

reading is for the lazy, you can skip whole paragraphs without missing anything. A movie, you get up to go to the potty, you come back, and you are totally lost. Unless of course, and you know what I'm going to say...but you won't be lost...if the movie ....is based on....something women like to watch....because it is just about some woman learning to assert herself enough to break up with her rude boyfriend and get married to the rich gentlemen. Or the exact opposite. ALl you need to do is look at who she is with in the beginning, and at the end, you know it will be the opposite. Oh, and she'll have cried for some reason, probably because she feels ugly, which she is, or at least, compared to the really hot 'bitch' that has made her life tough for oh these many years. Also, if the movie was based on a book, but I just felt like making the women mad at me, cause i know you all love the bad boys. and, if I'm a complete jerk, then I'll get to date you for a while. RIght, yeah, that's it...you've ALL dated me, haven't you? And one of your best friends is dating me right now. So if you are looking for an emotionally immature, out of shape male to send you mixed signals and drive you crazy enough that you can start acting more like the women you see on Lifetime, then I'm your stepping stone.

You know what is WORSE? Books on tape.

Even worse? Cliff notes on tape.

Even worse? Visiting your son in kindergaden for a day, and trying to get the teacher to read from "The unbearable lightness of being" because you'd like to be able to talk about it at a cocktail party that weekend.

Each book you buy is one more strike against TV. You bookworms are responsible for killing "Touched by an Angel" spin offs. They did the math, there just weren't enough hours in the day for all the Stephen King fans to watch TBAA, read the next book, AND watch spin offs about other angels. Luckily, Buffy fans don't read. Same goes for the people who like Joe Millionaire? Who woulda thunk?

God, these are not even funny. Time to hit Publish

UN soldiers nab Clinton's half brother, Robert.

Barbara Bush admits that Jeb and W are actually only half-brothers. Much like Saddam's father, she had multiple relationships over her many years. As such Saddam has promised to extract his revenge, realizing that he can now repay George W Bush in kind by arresting his half brother. Saddam's press release, written on the back of a napkin, seemed to indicate that although he and his half-brothers had never been close, they were still family, and his dad would be pissed he if didn't at least try to get some revenge. Sure they were the black sheep of the family, they never really fit in with the kids from the other others, but still...their family. Of all people, the Bushes should understand how that kind of obligation leads you to put your sons and brothers into positions you know they aren't really qualified for, but you just don't want to pack extra bags for the guilt trip you'd have to take at the family reunion.

Second. In the wake of Dr. Atkin's death, a new guide to living healthy has been published. How to not fall down and end up killing yourself after years of not getting to eat food that tastes good. Thousands are already flocking to the book, knocking each other over the process. In some bookstores, cliffnotes versions of the books main messages are given to customers at the door, in an effort to insure that these fat, desperate, clumsy consumer will be able to make it to the book.

"We had millions of people coming in for the book, "Said local Barnes and Noble Manager MC Hammer, "but without having already read it, they were literally dying to get their hands on it. And I'm again using literally correctly, I've had 36 corpses removed from the strore today. If there were any pigs in here, they'd back me up. I could have canceled our contract with Scotch® if I knew that we were going to have access to so much police tape. So yeah, all of them, dying in the store. I'd laugh about the irony, but I don't have to tell you, but dead bodies don't always help you move merchandise. Not everyone reads Stephen King and ...um...all those other authors over in the mystery section. Its inbetween fantasy and general non-fiction over on aisle 12. Anyways, back to the reason for the cliff notes. We got a lot of studies from HQ that say that Customers who die in the store are 80% less likely to buy than those that manage to live throughout the shopping experience. It was mainly to keep the coffee bar staff from serving month old bread, but I am pretty sure I cam extend the conclusion to this case."

Unfortunately, he continued "If only they had been able to read the book before they went out to buy it. They might all be alive..also, that old doctor might have learned a thing or two about what really endangers your health. They say that scientists are always publishing studies about things we always take for granted, like when scientists tell us that Men are from Mars or something. Well, duh. But, right after I think about that, some old dude turns out to know now about gravity or something. People just don't get much out of medical school i guess. All that book smarts and no commen sense? I'll tell ya, I'd rather be working here when I'm 72 than dead. So yeah, I guess we need books delivered to people right before they do something stupid or risky. Isn't that why Al Gore made the internet? So How about it, science?"

Quickly. P.A.T.L.A. and Copenhagen.

So, without further ado. Cut to a small Australian Cafe in Sydney Australia. Rupert is sitting at the bar, 24 years old. A paper by his Foster's indicates that it is it March 11th, 1955. It is also Rupert's birthday.

Cut to the door, a small Iraqi youth comes in to the restaurant. He is clean shaven. Eighteen years old. Small dogtag on his backpack reads Saddam.

<long scene, the two make polite conversation, then talk politics, religion, leadership, economics, basically each giving hints of the potential each of them have at the time>

Cut to the final scene, bartender approaching Rupert, presenting him with a check for both. "The kid said you'd cover this one."

Rupert pays by throwing money down, running outside, furious that Saddam would stiff him and leave him with the check. He looks around, but there is no one to be seen, there is just the empty road to the Outback.

Rupert cocks his head, shaking his fist at the sky (ala Shatner in Trek II) screaming "Saddam" we cut to the setting sun.

"I vow that I shall have my revenge upon you Saddam. I will find you, I will destroy you. You will curse the day that you crossed me"

Fade to black.

No big plans for the foreseeable future, since Law School Studying, surfing the web, and watching TV are probably all I can afford to do. Tonight I am trying to see "Melvin Goes to Dinner" or whatever. Hopefully it will not be sold out, and I will be able to get my ticket with a student discount. I hope that no one else knows about it. Well, I guess I hope that the people who know about it went to the Wednesday night show.

The updates to the website, therefore, will probably slow down considerably. The content stuff is basically as caught up as it can be, given my limited access to a scanner or old evidence of activities I engaged in. Perhaps mid June will see an upswing, both as I start doing things in Richmond and start cleaning my room once again at my mother's urging. Probably not though. Other than pictures, I rarely have evidence of activities. And I cannot recall the exact story behind a picture. Perhaps some pictures can speak a thousand words, but you need to have the context behind them in order for those thousand words to generate themselves. I'll look through. I may just end up scanning a few that I find to speak the most words to me. We'll see if that works itself out or not.

I'll go ahead and try to update the main news page to remind myself what I have done in the past week. I've gone through a lot of boring code in an effort to remind myself what is going to get my pages as close as they can be to 4.01 transitional or what-have you.

Basically, any update (other than this, which is insanely easy to do) in the next few weeks was done to distract from school, so it may not been that amazing, since I will be not being doing it out of any desire to do the activity in and of itself. Or at least, that is how I predict I will behave in the near future. Hopefully, now that we are both aware of this, you will be more critical of my work and I will try and I will engage in more substantive work in order to prove you wrong.

Talking to someone, they said they were annoyed when the Jamaican woman starts singing in the "underneath" song by N Doubt. Having listened to the song again, I am now more in favor of it than before. My initial thought was that it could make the song more humorous in a Karaoke setting (although I have never personally engaged in the practice). I mean, imagine some slightly punk girl singing this love song, and then suddenly needing to do an impression of the accent. Lord have mercy! As Dave Chapell might say if he was under gun point to recite his lines from Half Baked. So, that was why I approved of it at first, and it still applies. I guess that this other person does not have the same respect for songs that both attract and repulse you when you make a karaoke setting. But I think that it may speak to one other thing. Perhaps it is No Doubt's way of addressing Gwen's relationship with the Bush lead singer. I believe they are married. If so, it makes sense that this song is written by Gwen to her husband. If so, the part where the Jamaican lady says "aside from your temper" may allow Gwen to express her doubts about the relationship without actually voicing them herself. She has 'created' this second personality to address her complaints.

So I am not looking for trouble in paradise, I am looking for things to talk about. Given that this dual personality discussion gives you the ability to open some movie by engaging in Reservoir Dogs analysis (see the opening scene where they debate the meaning of a Madonna song), then this song has a second benefit. Oh, and if she hadn't written the song, then there would be no video. and the video appears to trace her through her different outfits, further lending support to the idea that she views her persona as something she both creates, changes, and whatnot. My friend also felt that she normally dressed in unattractive ways, but then at the end of the video, she is very 'natural' ( I use natural in the sense that the dominant culture defines the feminine woman - ie. non-aggressive, soft, frail, cute, whatever, you can apply whatever words you think are words I would use to describe it) so, very natural and she would be considered attractive by the majority of white males. This allows a third discussion, less about the nature of the internal workings of the song and more about the nature of what we require of our celebrities. But that is another discussion for another blog.

Summary: I did not want to do my reading. You obviously had the time to read this. No conclusions about No Doubt other than the moral of the video "Don't Speak" seem to have already hit the nail on the head. Given that this blog seems to be turning into a discussion of female celebrities, perhaps it should be renamed, or at least get a new category. Finally, more jokes will be created this weekend, hopefully from observations on the news. Now that there is less uncertainty about the fate of our troops, I think that I can engage in armchair quarterbacking without offending even the most right wing of my gentle readers. So, get prepared for Saddam's "Hanging out in Syria" Web Journal entries or something.

Here's a taste.

" I know. I know. sorry for the lack of updates. but, unlike most people, if you were really desperate, you could just turn on CNN. All you have to do is assume that what they say is the opposite of the truth, and you would basically know what is up in my world these days.

Anyways, I was actually watching CNN myself, maybe it is some kind of morbid obsession with Iraq or something. I was watching the American journalists exploring my palace. The stereo was still there (thank Allah!), but it looked like it might have been busted by a bomb. I'm trying to be optimistic, but it is tough at this point. The other leaders who fled with me keep saying "at least you've got your health, dude" but I don't know, I can't really live without my Credence in Dolby.

But, I guess everything else is going pretty well. I miss the harem a little, I really miss the dogs. Dogs are great. They don't get jealous when you pet one of your other dogs, or at least, they don't refuse to get petted the next time. Women, eh? Anyways, i still have some celebrity here in the world, so I can always cash in on that down at the bars.

Finally, that statute thing still eats me up. I mean, that was a present I gave to my supporters. Secondly, that was THE best statute ever made of me. They got it exactly right. I don't always pose well for statutes. And the designers always seem to get my eyes wrong. But this one was it. Hell, destroying all those gaudy pictures around the country really did me a favor. I would have done it myself...I didn't commission those, politicians who wanted to earn my respect kept doing it. I couldn't say no, otherwise they would have suspected that I was planning on killing them the next chance i got (which was usually true, if you believe what Fox News seems to think about me -- what did I ever do to rupert? He needs to get over the fact that I was dictator of a country and he only gets to be CEO of a company built on Christina Applegate's acting ability. ). But even the worst situation has its bright points (Hey, maybe my friends were right!) so I just need to keep my chin up and focus on the positive. Secondly, I really know who my friends are now. I guess there is something about war that really seperates the sunnyday friends from the people who will go to the mat for you. So, to all my true friends, I hope you are met with 1000 virgins in heaven. Oh, and save some for me. I plan on getting there eventually....but I've still got some unfinished business down here with the great satan.

Oh, and K-dog. I can't figure out how to add comments, and I don't know if I want them. I think that that would just attract the wrong sort of people to this blog. - SADDAM OUT"

- The end?

So, I have gotten some questions (read: one) about why I was commenting that I thought that the Boston Comedy Club had a stupid name. Well, first, it is because I hate the North East and the Irish that I associate with Boston. Secondly, people from Harvard tend like Boston. And thirdly, it is a stupid name because it is physically located within the area formally known as New York.

How stupid do you have to be to name it the Boston Comedy Club? I mean, I guess you could be a drunk Irishman fresh off the boat. Now, I am about 1/2 Irish, so I am allowed to make this joke. I have my shirt back at home, something about being Irish and enjoying alcohol. So, you are this drunk guy named Malachy, trying to come to start a new life for yourself. You keep getting letters from the family members that fled during the Potato Famine telling you that there is a thriving subculture in Boston, and you should come and start up a comedy club there.

So, then entire boat ride, you are focused on the comedy club name. You want something simple, you want something that may discourage other people from starting one. So you pick 'The Boston Comedy Club" Maybe people will think there is only one, they won't keep looking. And other potential competition will realize this, and never even try to start one. So you have a great name. Only problem is, you have a taste for the bottle.

So you get off the boat at Ellis Island and you are like "Arrgh, where be the road to boston, matey?"

And yes, I have heard from other previous audiences that my Irish impression comes off sort of like a pirate. But let me tell you, that I have been to Ireland, and I am doing the correct voice. What you basically have here in America is about 200 years of disinformation by the incredibly powerful pirate lobby. I mean, the pirates all got together sometime after Jefferson started sending ships out to kill them, and decided that their battle against America needed some tweaking. So, you can all imagine 45 Pirate kings meeting in the Pirate League of Ships, and discussing how to best go about looting America given that the high seas were no longer safe for the honest, hard working pirate. Well, one plan emerged. No one in America was Irish in 1803, sure, some people in America had heard of the Irish, since their great grandkids had come from England, but there was little to know first hand encounters. So, here was a country with no television, little communication between the colonies themselves, and no such thing as education.

So, Peg-leg Pete, he gets up and he points all this out. His speech is passionate, these are desperate times. He has three parrots to feed, and he knows that many other pirates are suffering from the same cracker shortage. The business model must evolve if they are to remain competitive in this world where people now regard pirates as jerks and the french as friends of democracy. Nodding all around, several members pound their own wooden legs against the sand, trying to make some noise. Peg leg raises his hand above his head just as the sun breaks through the clouds, most pirates squint with their one remaining eye. As their eyes adjust, they see, impaled on his hook, a single four leaf clover.

The statesman like Pegleg makes the case that they should all take their ships, switch flags, and then sail into NY harbor. Their crew would need to take a quick lesson in 'acting like a huddled mass yearning to breathe free', but it would be no problem, since they have spent so much time looting and pillaging ships with just such people aboard. The past 20 years of pirating has prepared them for just such a moment, more and more they were hiding their gold in off-shore accounts, not in secret caves with complex maps. If they ditch the ships, then no one is going to be able to easily indentify them as pirates. Of course, they need to have an cover story, and so, he proposed that they all just tell people they are irish.

So, that is why we all think that the American Irish accent is the Irish Irish accent. Pirates came in with all their talk of "laddies" and "O'connors" and people bought their story hook line and sinker. The real Irish, when they came over, were then mistaken for Pirates, because that was the only cultural group that was left. They were all drunk, so it did not concern them very much. Also, they really liked the way the Pirates were living, so the two groups merged in 1870, which is another story for another time. Just so you know, that story ends in the invention of the monkey bars.

So, when I say the irish man stepped off the boat and said "arrgh, matey, tell me where boston be or I will send you to davey jones' locker", you should know that I am being as accurate as possible in my joke. So, here is the drunken Irish guy, trying to find Boston to start his comedy club. But no one likes Pirates, so no one will help him. Because they all think he is a pirate. We all know that America welcomed the Irish with open arms. But, sadly his lot was to be beaten by police and blamed for many social ills merely because he had a shirt that said "Ask me about my buried treasure"

So, unable to find Boston, he just sets up shop in the East VIllage, hoping that maybe he can one day lead a large social movement to switch the names of the cities. Of course, he is later keel-hauled, so the Boston Comedy Club secret dies with the Irishman. So the children, who he never told, start operating it to honor the memory of their father, Blackbeard the Irishman. So, he wasn't really a moron. But I call him one because I hate the Irish.

Now, I realize that at one point New York was called New Amsterdam, so I mean, I guess he was just trying to guess the next trend, the way that some people tried to register domain names based on what they thought future movies would be called, but that kind of speculation rarely pays off. If anything, New York City seemed more likely to be remained....

Trail off to the next joke about how LA and NYC are different.

My roommate has been asked by his parents to come back home to spend a week with his little brother. They are going out of town, and I suppose it is not a big deal. He won't be missing school, because his parents only live 9 blocks up the street from here, and his brother is looking into colleges. Not exactly a child in the babysitting sense. Anyways, my roommate points out that he is going back because his brother probably won't survive on his own.

Of course, my roommate's diet is 30-50% PB&J. So there must be some kind of danger with the younger brother getting hold of a knife. Either that, or perhaps the difficulty is in the preparation itself. There is always at least one step between taking the food from the cabinet and then consuming it. Hey, even a Snickers Bar has to be take out of the wrapper. I guess the only perfect food is the apple. But what if he doesn't know when to stop eating it? An apple a day may keep the doctor away, but what kind of sick god would create a food with a core perfectly designed to lodge in your esophagus if you swallow it whole?

But anyways, I am sort of imagining the phone call the parents will make on the first night of their trip out of town.
"Honey, is everything all right?"
Good, mom, no complaints.
"and your brother?"
He...He's ...uhh...he's good. Real good.
"Can I speak to him?" Oh...sure...(adopting a slightly more shrill voice)...hello?
"Is this a joke?"
Okay, mom, he's dead. Is that what you wanted? You got it out of me. You win. Once again! I got distracted while I was opening the jar of peanut butter, and the top just slipped out of my hand...
"oh god...wait...he was killed by the jar of peanut butter...oh god..."
No, mom...the LID of the jar. God, you never listen to what I'm saying. This is exactly why I moved nine blocks south of you. Don't you get it?
"how...how did it...oh jesus"
I don't know. Like I said, I wasn't paying attention. One minute I was opening the jar, the next minute he's dead....oh wait..
"What, what is it?"
Did I say I killed him? Man, sorry. I meant that I let him order a pizza. (turning head away from phone) Hey dude, mom's on the phone..and SHE SOUNDS PISSED THAT YOU ORDERED THAT PIZZA, IT ALMOST MADE HER CRY
(Muffled sounds in the background, another phone being picked up)
"oh thank god"
What? What? When you went away for that retreat in 96 and *I* ordered chinese instead of reheating your pasta, you yelled at me for like 10 minutes on the phone, and now dingus over here learns how to dial a phone, and you're all like 'our little boy is growing up!!' I hate this double standard!

Also, I think it would have been funny if the parents had just send his little brother down to camp out on our floor for 7 days. He could have set up a little tent and pretended that he wasn't old enough to drive.

- The End.

Well, there are now two briefs floating around that will determine my future in very minor ways. One I have the chance to edit, the other is finalized. This isn't a law school report because I don't think I have other law related things to report. Categories are made to be blurred anyways. My personal agenda is law school sometimes.

It is currently snowing in the city of New York (great names, MORONS!) I am trying to gear myself up to do some quick review so that I can talk opening in my upcoming meeting with the Crim Professor.

This week I was planning on spending Thursday night at the Upright Citizens Brigade, Friday at the School Law Revue, and Saturday seeing a indie movie by Bob O. We will see if those things all work out. The first two are not necessarily important to me... this indie movie is important, since it may be a little like Wet Hot in terms of humor. I understand that it will not be over the top like Mr. Show.

Here is finally a lawyer joke.

Yeah, so I am a lawyer. That's right, we all hate lawyers. But when they are on network TV it is a different story. We will watch 24 hours of Law & Order. Our demand for television lawyers dictates that there should always be some fake lawyer in court every second of the day.

Anyways, I'm not the kind of lawyer you hate. I am a non-practicing lawyer. That's right. I am still a student, I have never sued anyone for anything. I'll be honest though, I have a hidden agenda here. I want to convince you that you probably should develop some respect for the practicing lawyer. I mean, you probably think that I've never had a case because I am morally opposed to ambulance chasing or something like that.

That assumption is not true at all. I'd love to get a sweet personal injury case, but I just can't actually catch them. The ambulances, that is. That's why I respect the guy who makes a living off that. It takes dedication because Those ambulance drivers can fucking fly man. These dudes don't stop for ANYTHING. Also as a side note, when they are stopping, there's almost never anyone in them that needs representation. Basically, the times I would most like to catch them are the times when they are trying their damnedest to get away from me.

So yeah, if they were a normal car, I'd expect that I could make up ground on the vehicle each time they got caught by a red light. But these dudes, its like WEE OOO WEE OOO, and they go right through it. They are men on a mission, and that mission is to beat me and leave me eating their fumes. And don't tell me I should ride a bike...cause there is no way that I would be able to jump from a bike onto the ambulance. Also, if I was able to learn to do that, I'd lose a bike each time. I'm not made of money. I can't go around throwing bikes around Manhattan streets. No, I need to do it on my feet so that I can keep the overhead low. Hey, I'll be passing the savings on to you, the guy who I knocked over as I chased that ambulance the other week.

Oh yeah, what's that? I should just stay at the hospital? But man, in a city with lots of hospitals, how do I know which on the ambulance is going to unless I first see the tag? You need to be at the accident first man. Secondly what about the chase? There is something ancient and sacred about hunting. Men don't get much out of gardening. You don't see the lion waiting for the gazelle to jump between its paws. It is out there, big puffy mane, working hard every day of it. Actually, that's a lie. I hear that lions just wait for the hyenas to kill the gazelles and then scare the resourceful hyenas off once the kill has been made. But since the lions are the ones sitting by the carcass in the morning, everyone assumes that lions are the ones that made the kill. Hence we call them the king of the jungle by mistake, just like we call George W Bush our legitimate President. (Hey, if you did not want political commentary, you'd be at home watching Fox News, wouldn't you?)

So, I guess the lawyers chasing the ambulances are hyenas. And the hospital is a wonderful oasis on the barren plains of the desert. So the good lawyers are hyenas. They are the really fast ones who can catch the prey and offer initial representation. So maybe I am a slow lion, in the sense that I could scare the hyenas off once they get the 'gazelle' back to the 'oasis' by using my mighty paws and loud roar. Only in this metaphor, the paws are a taser, and my loud roar is the smell of urine. Then I could go into the hospital with the injured gazelle and start to see if they have a case. Man, now that I think about it, being a lawyer rules. I'm going to have to work on my roar though. I need it to be overpowering to the other lawyers, but pleasant enough to let me get past the hospital security guards. So, the next time you are in an ambulance, you should probably listen for the screams of other lawyers as I scare them off before coming to feast upon your suffering.

And speaking of feasting on human misery, has anyone tried to buy a used car in this city....fade out....

So, with Janeane (pause to insert joke number one)

(As Saddam writes about Kirsten Dunst [in the mind of Eugene Mirman's at least] "I wonder if she will ever google herself and find this page" -- sorry this wasn't really a point, but it was funny when Eugene read us the entry from Saddam's blog about "Gee.. why is there never anything good on TV? And to make matters worse, the bombing has begun!" ) (unpause for the joke #2)

set to turn 39 in September, I was considering looking for the next crush, since maybe I need to avoid any relationship at this point that would involve the word menopause. (pause for joke number three in a sort of whisper)

(the really nice thing, sorry to pause again here...I promise I WILL get to some kind of joke sooner or later, is that Janeane always grows older at the same rate that I do, so I can always update the joke to claim that her NEW age is on the brink of taking her off my list. Secondly, not to spoil this, but I have found a girl who is slightly younger than Janeane to insert into this joke. And this NEW girl also ages at the same rate. One birthday a year. So I will be able to ride this joke probably until one of them dies...that is, unless I can figure out a way to talk about dead girls in this joke. Well, I should get back and keep this 'behind the music' stuff from getting out of hand...but for all you who get bored during the joke, i think that one way to amuse yourself would be to try and imagine how I will deliver this joke in the year 2007 if you are up to the challenge.) (unpause to return to joke #1 that really hasn't even started yet)

(Loudly again) Sorry Ms Garofalo, but I like my comedy women in their mid thirties, not the late thirties! And as luck would have it, I remembered Sarah Silverman from her appearance on the Mr Show DVD! And she was born in December of 1970. She'll be 33 this year! I know some of you are saying, 33 isn't mid. 4-7 is mid-thirties. But you are just splitting hairs. Love isn't about a number as long as the first number of the age is 3 and there is only one number after that falls between 2 and 7.

I'm making is so specific because I could see all you perverts, trying to tell yourselves that I would go for a 300 year old and her 3 year old great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great granddaughter. First off. I am a one woman guy so I 'm not dating both of them. Secondly, I don't want to date dead chicks. At least, not yet anyways.... Thirdly, anyone that old would probably be named Betsy, and I don't date women named after cows.. and if I'm not dating Betsy, then I'm not dating Besty the 12th, her great great, eh, you get the picture, and yes, it would work better if our society allowed women to be named Junior and the third, but it doesn't, so the social critics will always get me on that point. But lastly, someone else already made the joke about dating a three year AND they put it on a tshirt. So to review.

I don't date anyone who wasn't alive to see the Iran Contra Hearings (aka the Iran-Contra Affair). That kind of defined the generation of women I am interested in meeting and three year olds just do not fit the bill. I mean, we need to be able to talk about these things if we are going to have the kind of open, caring relationship that I've always dreamed of having. What would I say to someone who doesn't have that experience under the belt? Sure, I guess I could try and talk about WhiteWater and Lewinsky...but that feels intellectually dishonest and I know that I would always secretly blame her for making me change. She'll thank me one day for never returning her phone calls or stopping back by "her crib" again since that one date we had. Oh come on, isn't that what the kids are calling it these days "MTV, come check out my 'crib'!", "I sleep in my crib, yo!" "mommy hung the neatest little Mobile with a rocket ship over my 'crib'? You people need to get your minds out of the gutter

But back to my needs as a political observer. I'm sure this is why the 40 year olds don't return the phone calls. They are probably looking for that special guy who lived through Watergate. People say age is really about how you feel and then go about their merry lives pretending that the earth is flat and that diet dr pepper really does taste more like regular dr pepper.. I ask you "do I really care about the feelings of someone who doesn't know what it was like to watch Ollie North testify?" Sure they could rent the video, but they already know the ending. I guess I am looking for someone who experienced the suspense first hand...and also, if they don't know the ending yet (which would allow them to experience the suspense I require), then we are obviously not compatible, since she doesn't seem to care about her past. Basically, anyone under 18 at this point is in a catch-22 and she just cannot win. Oh, an audience member pointed this out--- It's like illegal too, so in the end, my personal reasons really turn out to have some positive side benefits. So yeah, I need a woman who looks back at events that some people deem trivial and really feels like those events shaped and defined her as a human being..but that need helps keep the police off my back, which is a good thing.

I don't date 300 year olds because statistically, all of them are dead. Dead people rarely want to do anything. I'm always making the suggestions for what to do this weekend, and then I am the one greeted with silence and this icy, cold stare. Well, if their eye sockets haven't caved in of course. Sure, you can sort of tell they are having fun on the rollercoaster, but do they ever thank you for dragging them along? No, also, I used dragging in the literal sense in that previous sentence... I don't need that kind of toxic, decaying relationship at this point in my life. Not when there are plenty of women walking around who don't even know I am in the city. Lots of them seem able to engage in self-maintenance...unlike old dead Betsy. But let's not go there. And we are not going to talk about the pluses and minuses of rigor mortis today.

I'll just end by pointing out that, the woman who is 300 years old today was something like 285 when the Iran Contra Scandal broke. She was already pushing the definition of 'mid-seventies' when TJ and GW signed the Declaration of Independence In fact, she was probably one of the grandmothers who responded the Boston Tea party by saying "boys will be boys" and then baked everyone a pie. And you and I both know, she is probably looking for that dead 300 year old man who sat on the edge of his seat reading news fresh off the printing press that discussed George Washington's adventures in the French and Indian War. How can I ever compete with that? Sure I got a 5 on the AP US history exam...but she LIVED it. She doesn't want to date someone who could be her great-great...eh, forget it...you get the picture. To her, the Hearings were probably a 'Been there, done that, sewed myself a new dress regarding it" sort of thing for her. Course, now that she is dead, does she ever make herself new clothes? No, she really just doesn't even care about her appearance these days.

Anyways, like I was saying, Sarah is, by all accounts both alive and in her mid-thirties. Here is a small sample of jokes she has given.

"So there I was licking jelly off my boyfriend ... and I thought: Oh my God, I'm turning into my mother!"
"I saw my father naked once . . . But it was okay . . . Because I was soooo young . . . and sooo drunk."
"People are always introducing me as "Sarah Siverman, Jewish comedienne." I HATE that! I wish people would see me for who I really am- I'm white!"
"I heard a rumor that Marilyn Manson's Jewish . . . Which is cool . . . That must mean that somewhere there's 20 or 30 people who can say, 'Oh yeah, Marilyn Manson, I went to Hebrew School with that guy.' "
"I'm dating a guy right now who's half-black. And I just know we're gonna break up. Wait a minute- look at me. I'm such a pessimist. He's half-white!"

Also, she used to work at the Boston Comedy Club. Which is here, in NYC. (good name, MORONS!) Which is right down the block from me. I pass it EVERYDAY on my way to class. Of course, she was here in her 20s. AND NOW I'm here in my 20s. Talk about shared experiences. Also, she was in Screwed. Which Matt and I saw IN THE THEATER. (It only played for two weeks in most theaters. It made 3.5 million one week, another 2.5 million the next, and then a few theaters kept playing it, so it ended up making about one million after that. So, only like 100,000 people must have seen it if you assume 7 dollars a ticket, which is pretty low since NYC was already 9 in 2000). So, mathematically, there are probably only 5000 of those people that even live in NYC, and even fewer who walk by her old home.) I know that I went because Matt has a non-sexual man-crush on Norm, but I was excited to see her, a little I guess...It would have been great if it was Janeane. Man, I am twisted.

So there you have it. No conclusion, which at this point makes it a bad joke. Perhaps something will come to me now that I have written all this. More stuff did come to me regarding Mr. Notes Publishing. So I'll be sure to edit this file and anything beyond this upcoming period was added well after I first published this joke.

(Oh, and for all of you who didn't manage to think about how this joke will be told in the year 2007. Too bad, you really missed out. I was actually thinking about how I will tell this joke in the year 2010, the year Sarah turns 40. 40! Imagine the possibilities! I know that the reference to TJ and GW went over pretty well with this crowd, but if I want to make it big on Conan, I am going to NEED to make jokes about things that happened 400 years ago. 300 years ago may get you pretty far in the bush leagues, but all the heavy hitters managed to get 400. Like Ted Williams or something. Sure, four seems to cut out my crib joke, but let's be honest, it was pushing it to say that a three year old slept in a crib. I really long for the late 1980s. Sure I was a little nerdy kid in middle school, but Janeane was in her 20s, so I could talk about cribs without batting an eye. Of course, Lewis and Clark jokes tended to fall flat, but no era is perfect I suppose. So, look for me on Conan in like eight years. Of course, there I will be ending my set by referencing the 1500s and shit like that, but the "meat" of the joke will probably be about Pocahantas. And let me tell you, most comedians only DREAM about working in a good Captain John Smith and Pocahatas Joke into their otherwise pop culture filled act. I guess you could say I'm living in a dream world. But then again, if you are only three, you probably don't understand why you are saying it.)

Letter from myself in the past. 5th grade writing assignment. Hopes and dreams. What i want to do with my life.
- "Hope I own a race car. Hope I have a jet pack. Hope I have better things to do than read this letter when I am older"
- "Had my heart broken by Kate, hope I figure out girls someday soon"
- "

Does anyone here ever engage in thought experiments? You know, "what would my parents think", " what would Jesus do?" Anyone? Well, I do. At least I do for the purposes of this joke. Anyways, I tend to think that the person you pick as your role model says a lot about what you want to end up doing.
You pick a rich CEO because maybe you want to be more calculating and ruthless.
Like, if I picked my grandparents, that would mean that I was interested in sitting around more and being old.
Or if I wore a wrist band that said "what would my friends do", I'd be trying to get myself to make less intelligent decisions.

Now I'm not saying my friends are idiots...but
- most of them are going to be lawyers.

Well, okay. So this probably isn't up yet. But I finally finished making my February video edits. Basically, I filmed Matt Green and Dave Click doing a few stupid things in preparation for their MC gig at the Washington Society Banquet. If you are on a fast computer, then you should follow the following link

Wash Banquet Movie

If you don't like going straight to a big movie file (over 6 megs, you lightweight), then you could just go to

Life is getting sweet. Except for the whole studying thing. Also, when I started this webpage, I never expected to post my own movie under a movie heading. Life carries on.

Water, fish, crackers, and candy. Those are the four things we are delivering to the people of Iraq (who aren't thought to be secret soldiers) and calling humanitarian aid. I can understand the water no problem, they live in a desert and most of them don't drink any alcohol. Fish and crackers seem much more like hors d'oeuvres. Are we worried they may get too fat to really like democracy? We are overweight and we are willing to fight for democratic values. Maybe if we got them fatter, they would come around. A lot of Russians are overweight, and they now like voting and capitalism. Whales too. Don't ask me to pick out the skinny countries, now is the time to focus on Iraq. So, fish and crackers are pretty tasty. I hope it is salmon and Ritz®. But candy. Honestly, isn't that what strangers use to get you into their car? I'm sure Iraqi mothers are always telling their kids not to take candy from strangers, and here come strangers with guns who might kill daddy. How much candy would you want to eat? Also, if we just start giving away candy, how are we going to get them to embrace Halloween? The lazy kids would be like..."I have to do what to get more candy?...I'll just wait til you guys invade us again...thanks, but no thanks."