An interesting story from someone on a USO tour in Iraq:

The first "meet and greet" made me weep. Why? Soldiers, armed with M16s and saddlebags of water in 120-degree heat, swarmed over the stars for photos and autographs. When it was announced that a trio of Sept. 11 family members was also in the tent it was as if a psychic cork on an emotional dam was popped.

Soldiers from all over our great country rushed toward us to express their condolences. Some wanted to touch us, as if they needed a physical connection to our sorrow and for some living proof for why they were there.

Very well written. Via On the Third Hand.

'Nipple Huggers' Adult Nipple Jewelry are the latest craze! Our Nipple Huggers Nipple Jewelry makes you 'hot' in more ways than one! Real soon you will be seeing our nipple jewelry in photographs of professional models, in videos, and in magazines. Worn with evening gowns, street clothes and even office clothes (as well as lingerie of course)!

See and buy them here .

Don't forget to fill out the contest form to win a free pair!

EmbarassingProblems.com is a cool site with the straight dope on pretty much every gross thing that can happen to people. From farts to zits to tics to warts, they've got it all.

Oh get over yourself, everyone's fascinated with this stuff.

Yet another extremely silly ditty that will be stuck in your head forever... Cows with Guns

Note: Takes awhile to load. I think it's worth it, but I'm pretty twisted.

Just found yet another entry in the "stabbed in the brain" category. As always, with cool-and-freaky x-ray pic.

BBCnews is carrying this article on a very interesting archeological discovery:

A Roman pot unearthed at an archaeological dig in London has been opened to reveal cream which is nearly 2,000 years old.

The sealed pot full of ointment, complete with finger marks, was discovered at a Roman temple complex in Southwark, south London.

They have no idea what it might have been used for. With picture!

I know of at least two people who will find J-List.com an interesting place. All things Japanese, including the completely bizzare naughty bits they're famous for, are available here. Tell 'em AMCGLTD sent ya!

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (AP) -- Discovery of nearly a dozen mutilated house pets over the past year had sparked fears of a serial cat killer. But the cats were probably killed by hungry foxes, an animal control official said Tuesday.

Thanks to Elizabeth for the story! Kitty No-Prize to you! Keep your cats inside people! or at least on a harness and leash.

I got this quiz off of Slacker Uncensored. Go check out the site!

Apparently I am:

Take the What animal best portrays your sexual appetite?? Quiz

People never cease to amaze me. There are people out there so nice you want to drown them in cat urine and there are people out there that are so miserable you want to be the one to end their existance just because they are annoying you.

I was out and about today walking with Olivia around the neighborhood putting up my 'Cat Sitting Available' signs on the common mail boxes when I thought it would be a nice treat to stop at the 7-11 for a slushie. The humidity was getting to the both of us and stepping in to some airconditioning for a few minutes would be nice. Plus I had my eye on the bench across the street in the shade to enjoy my slushie and to give Olivia a cold bottle I brought along.

Mistake. Something bad always happens to me.

I purchased my Tropical Sprite slushie and was on my way out the door when the guy behind me, skips to the front as I am opening the door. Ok, this dude is in a bad mood. Do I say anything? Nope. Should I have? Yup.

"Jesus Christ! You fucking women and these fucking strollers are always in the goddamn way!!" as he slams the door on my right hand with the slushie in it.

This is where it gets better. As this asshole skips out the door with his 3 cartons of Winston cigarettes, a hot dog and a Big Gulp, I'm staring at what used to be a 44oz slushie that has managed to explode in my hand, all over the front of the stroller and onto Olivia.

So now I have no slushie, a wet, sticky stroller and a baby covered in Sprite flavored slushie ice that is screaming her head off, and I have nearly a mile to walk home.

So much for a nice afternoon. Does anyone in the 7-11 help? Nope, they just stood and stared. I didn't even get offered paper towels to clean Olivia up with. I just tossed my cup outside in the trash next to the door and left what what left of my slushie on the floor and walked out.

You end up with something like this:

The Australian-based Tissue Culture and Art (TCA) project is growing a third ear fashioned out of the skin and cartilage of Stelarc, a performer who plans to implant it on his forearm.

And all this time I thought people who pierced their tounges were radical...

Slashdot linked up this interesting bit about a giant SF memorabilia auction. Actual props and constumes from Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers (your very own Twiki!), even some Star Wars and Aliens bits.

Heh. I wonder what would happen if I scored that alien thingy and then hung it from the ceiling while Ellen was gone...

Long time readers will know our fascination with Alton Brown and our occasionally successful attempts at implementing his techniques. Folks will also know that, as far as I'm concerned, half the fun is the "gear" of cooking. Fancy pots, pans, knives, spatulas, food processors... you name it, I either have it or want it. Turns out now there's going to be a whole book by good ol' AB himself that's nothing but gear.

Not all of it's expensive... the 12" Lodge cast iron he recommended is used at least 3 times a week at our house to cook something, and it only cost $24.95 (and if you don't have one yet run, don't walk, to the nearest crate & barrel or williams-sonoma and pick one up... damned useful piece of gear).

Rednova is featuring this nifty article on just how, exactly, an ion-drive motor works. A very small push, yes, but over a very long time indeed.

Only a college professor would be surprised at the public reaction of the creation of a futures market for terror attacks:

In the market, investors would have bought contracts that pay out if specific events happen. The contracts could have been complex, such the number of terrorist attacks against US citizens by the end of 2003, if US troops are not removed from Saudi Arabia. Other examples given included the assassination of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat or the overthrow of Jordan's ruling family.

The value determined by the market for these contracts is then a measure of the likelihood of the events happening.

From a purely academic point of view I have to question whether or not this would have been effective. The other futures markets the article cited were fundamentally different, not even tangentally related to violence or destruction.

But I mean, come on. Politicians live for sound bites, and the media thrives on distortion. Just how hard did they think it would be for both to come up with "market of death" when they heard about this thing?

Check your IQ online!

Scott scored a 122- a Precesion Processor, while I scored a measly 117- an Insightful Linguist.

Fun, but LONG test!

Joshua gets a no-prize cobbled together from plastic gears & electronics for bringing us this site detailing one guy's efforts to turn a regular flatbed scanner into a digital camera. The results really weren't half bad!

Who the hell thinks of these up? The flip side of this is that you know the reason why there are stupid warning lables out there is due to some dumb ass actually doing what they tell you not to do.

On a childs superman costume: Wearing of this garment does not enable you to fly.

Posted by Ellen at 04:16 AM | Comments (1)

Who doesn't like pictures!?

I found a link to that place via Looking Out. Origionally it was just a pix of a cat 3-some, but there were more funny photos to follow on the first link!

~Enjoy!

Animal Owners Sue Vets for Emotional Damages

New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Rhode Island are considering legislation granting pet owners the right to sue for pain and suffering damages, including punitive damages for neglect or abuse. Tennessee enacted such a law in 2000 and Illinois passed a version of the law last year. West Virginia has removed caps that once limited damages to the assessed value of a pet.

The trend is part of a growing push to recast pet owners as "guardians" in the eyes of the law, a shift that has some legal scholars worried.

See entire article here.

~Working in the veterinary field and being a slave to my cats, I can see why the law should change. You don't lose a pet, you lose a family member.

Posted by Ellen at 05:20 PM | Comments (7)

Thanks to Sherri who submitted this article!

BERLIN (Reuters) - A motor-mad three-year-old German boy crashed his father's car twice in four days, police in the western town of Borken said on Monday.

See entire story here.

Posted by Ellen at 05:06 PM | Comments (0)

There are many things to remember when operating a nuclear reactor, but one rule is paramount: Stay awake.

Between 6:09 and 6:15 on the morning of June 29, however, the only operator in the control room of the MIT Nuclear Reactor Laboratory, in the heart of Cambridge, was snoozing. There was never any threat to the public, scientists say, but the incident could bring a fine from the US government and is an embarrassment for a university proud of its technical prowess.

See entire article here

Those crazy Japanese are at it again !

Japan's lavatories are already a step ahead of the rest of the world.

Heated seats are routine, while some toilets come festooned with buttons and control panels.

Thanks to Jeff for this strange article.

Good thing Scott is not that crazy about cast iron.

Slashdot linked up this article discussing yet another tiny bit of science fiction that may enter our lives... beer glasses that tell the waiter when you need a refill. Now if they could just figure out how to tell it which waitress you want to bring it to you...

Yeah, I know. Couch time for pig-boy...

Jeff gets an oil-soaked no-prize for bringing this bit of oil change logic to our attention.

This is precisely why Damion and I save the beer for after we're done with the cars. We don't need any help messing stuff up.

Moral of the story: when given two choices, a politician will always pick the one most likely to get them re-elected, not the one that is in their constituent's best interest:

In response to the years of protest, former President Clinton agreed to stop Navy exercises [at the Puerto Rico island of Vieques]. Congress and President Bush ratified the deal and live-fire exercises were halted last May. But with its mission muzzled after 60 years, the Navy has decided to pull out of Puerto Rico completely.

That means the largest employer on the island, the Roosevelt Roads Naval Station, is now slated for closure that could come as early as October.

...

Puerto Rican Gov. Sila Calderon, who backed the booting of the Navy from Vieques, made no apologies for a decision that could crush the Puerto Rican economy.

"We are partners with the U.S., but definitely the rights of the people of Vieques are not for sale or for any other purpose," Calderon said.

Absolutely. Never let common sense get in the way of your pissing contest.

Hope died late Sunday of pneumonia, his longtime publicist Ward Grant said Monday. Hope's family was at his bedside at his home in Toluca Lake.

See entire article here.

While living next to an airport means I have plenty to listen to on a scanner, it also means I have plenty of light pollution to ruin the night sky. Therefore, even though I live well away from a major metropolitan area, I still have crap for seeing conditions. However, there are others who may not, so I'm linking this nifty how-to site on building your own telescope.

Me, I could barely find the moon with a telescope, let alone something fancy like a nebula or galaxy.

Slashdot linked up this NYT article detailing recent discussions on what, exactly, is to be done with the Hubble telescope once it reaches its scheduled end of service in 2012. Not surprisingly, the opinions are diverse and controversial.

This op-ed piece by Jim Hoagland at the Washington Post is the sort of reporting I'd like to see more of:

Traveling on a U.S. military transportation network that spans Iraq's insular, fragmented regions, I found in Baghdad, Basra, Mosul, Salahaddin and Kirkuk and elsewhere a still uneven mosaic of American-Iraqi cooperation that must now be rapidly extended. This nascent cooperation was evident across the region north of Baghdad and the so-called Sunni triangle, and in the Shiite south. Outside the Sunni triangle, as the area where most Sunnis live has come to be known, Iraq is much calmer than I expected from daily dispatches and television accounts that rarely treat sustained progress as news. The joint American-British occupation authority is making real progress in handing over responsibility to local authorities.

...

American generals in the north recognize their most urgent challenge far better than the occupation authorities in Baghdad. "We don't want other American troops to replace us," an Army one-star general from the 4th Infantry Division said at a background briefing in Kirkuk. "Turning things over to another U.S. military unit doesn't solve the problem here. We have to turn over to Iraqis."

Authorized to spend money confiscated from Hussein's regime on repairing schools, digging wells and other community projects, these commanders are agents of change. Many of them talk with genuine enthusiasm and confidence of winning "hearts and minds," a term I thought I would never hear employed seriously again after the disaster of Vietnam.

...

The 101st has spent $6.5 million on 1,398 projects so far in a spurt of unabashed nation-building that has cost U.S. taxpayers nothing. The Commanders Emergency Response Funds that Petraeus has tapped into come from $1.7 billion in Baathist regime assets seized in U.S. banks and $795 million in Hussein's cash seized by American soldiers.

(Emphasis added)

BERLIN (Reuters) - A giant catfish that ate a dog and terrorized a German lake for years has washed up dead, but the legend of "Kuno the Killer" lives on.

Posted by Ellen at 08:49 AM | Comments (0)

Ottawa's Nick Raina may have solved one of the world's greatest mysteries. Brushing aside hundreds of years worth of theories by historians and archeologists, the 69-year-old man claims he can build a Great Pyramid just like the one constructed by the Egyptians, in approximately 2450 BC, using simple hand tools and minimal force.

I wonder what our favorite Egyptologist Zahi Hawass thinks of this ?

It's easy to lose track of the news. So at the end of the week, it's good to keep an eye on some of those things which shouldn't go unnoticed.

See entire article here.

One of Scott's most favorite X-Box games and weekly story about the characters of Halo now have their own T-shirts for your wearing pleasure.

The last thing we all need is Scott to wear one of these shirts, he would insist on being called by the character name on the shirt.

One of my Alfa message lists pointed out this new seemingly space-age coolant that requires no water. Interesting to me because my "old school" Alfa motor is a combination of iron, steel, and aluminum that has a nasty tendency to corrode over very long periods of time (as do most other engines of this style of construction). Interesting to you? Well, who knows?

I have been watching this in the news for the past few days.

When it reaches its peak, visitors may find themselves holding their noses. The plant's smell is described as similar to rotting flesh or bad fish — earning it the nickname "corpse flower." Flanagan said someone once described the smell as two-day old cooked crabs.

And people think goldfish are easy to care for? If you're searching for the perfect pet, look no further than the almighty hermit crab -- a land crustacean that won't take up more than a few minutes a week to keep fed and clean, providing endless entertainment and wacky crab action along the way. The creatures, usually on sale in pet stores and boardwalk shops crammed into mesh cages, seem to have garnered a bad rap for being "boring." Not true -- they've just gotten used to hiding since they've dealt with the prying fingers of tormenting six-year-olds for all of their captive life. Once you get the things home and settled, you'll be surprised at what they're actually capable of. If not, there's still a small bonus found in the right to tell people that you own a "pet crab."

See entire entry here

The crabs shown in this article are sporting Spongbob Squarepants shells. Great article for a good chuckle.

Scott would convert his religion to this if there was a church nearby.

Beer Church The Largest Unorganized Religion in the World! Making the world a better place, one beer at a time.

For each and every one of you, your own appreciation of beer is something deeply personal. The appreciation of Beer is also something that is universal. Beer Church is about the relationship of the two; your personal affection for beer, and humanity's overwhelming love of Beer. Beer Church is a celebration of Beer (with a capital "B"). Beer Church represents the "something larger than yourself" to which you belong by virtue of your very personal love for beer. Beer Church is about the one thing that we all have in common, regardless of all of our other differences. Something we all believe in. Beer.

Any gender, any sexual preference, any nationality, any shoe size or hair style; beer drinkers of the world are all part of something much larger than themselves. They are part of a loosely connected, diverse social group of countless individuals all around the world, with at least one thing in common. Beer. And sure, someone might be able to say the same thing about cheese, or coffee, or many other things, but we didn't. We said it about beer. And because you know the difference, you are one of us. You are Beer Church.

At last count, Beer Church has over 40,000 registered members from 26 different countries around the world.

DIE MOSQUITOS!!! DIE!!!

Mindless fun, especially to someone who couldn't go outside on summer nights because of infestations. Living in a town surrounded by rice fields is just generally miserable.

Giant robot costume anyone? Props to the guy for building it, but I think he needed to practice walking in it more... to me the video doesn't look like a giant robot, it looks like a guy trying not to fall down.

If only Kobe had known about this insurance method:

[Chuck] Berry protected himself with a Polaroid camera. Before he'd have sex with a fan, he'd insist she strip and pose for a photo with him, smiling with their arms around each other.

WOW! A month has gone by already! She is a pound bigger and nearly 2 inches longer. Not to mention over 250 diapers used!

Happy 1 Month Baby Doll! :)

New pictures of Olivia are available on Bluelens.

VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- A patient who doctors say is the first-ever recipient of a human tongue transplant was recovering Tuesday and showed no signs of rejecting his new organ, his doctors said.

The patient, a 42-year-old man who suffered from a malignant tumor on his tongue and part of his jaw, underwent a 14-hour operation on Saturday in which doctors amputated his tongue and attached the new one.

See entire article here.

Posted by Ellen at 06:54 AM | Comments (0)

WoOT!??

I could totally see Scott doing something like this.

The all-day and into-the-night annual affair, held at Hansen Dam (this year's on July 26), begins with a mass morning blessing by a Catholic priest, who then goes car to car, blessing each individually. Some people also ask him put holy water in their radiators.

Scott actually needs to get that poor Spider blessed. Though I'm sure it would even rust with Holy Water.

Pat gets a no-prize for sending us this little ditty from a media wonk trying a classic "Who's Laughing Now?" maneuver.

I tried to address this in Casualties, but I don't think I made my point very well. Ok, in crystal-clear terms, as far as I'm concerned:

Your opinion of Bush is irrelevant. Your opinion of the war is irrelevant. Whether or not the administration exaggerated evidence or outright lied to get its way is irrelevant. I will repeat: NONE OF THESE THINGS MATTER ANYMORE. THEY. DO. NOT. MATTER! We won the war. We're there. Stop bleating and whining about "should haves" or "might have beens" because those things don't make a single goddamn bit of difference right now. Every time anyone mentions anything like this I just keep seeing empty horse barns with open doors and a kitchen with milk all over the floor.

Stop trying to get Bush out of the Whitehouse and start paying attention. Two entire nations are relying on us to help them back from the abyss. If your opinions, suggestions, or criticisms of Iraq or Afghanistan do not directly address this fundamental fact then please make sure the door doesn't hit your ass on the way out. I have no time for you, and I hope to hell the people actually trying to get the job done don't either.

Let's play a little thought experiment. A condemned house two blocks down gets bulldozed because it's a crack house, full of gangstas and thugs, a murder happening there nearly every week. A drive-by shooting from one gang killed your neighbor's kid. The house is gone; the neighborhood is peaceful again. But you know the dealers are still out there.

There's an abandoned house right across the street from the bulldozed one. There aren't any drug dealers there. It's just empty. Suddenly the city bulldozes that one, claiming it has turned into a crack house as well.

Would you really be that upset when the papers revealed the next day the house was still empty? Would you blame the mayor when drug dealers and homeless people started to sabotage construction equipment and kill the workers trying to build new, free, houses for them? Would you really try to claim that if the abandoned house had just been left alone the neighborhood would be a better place?

Now you can reproduce a perfect replica of your bone.

For about $40, you get a complete kit and a FREE 4oz tube of KY. Not only that, you can purchase a vibrator for $10 and put that in your bone for muscle relaxing pleasure.

Bikers. Chicks. Magazines. 80s style. Advertisements.

Did anyone ever actually buy any of that stuff?

I mean, of course you know all I was really looking at were the tools. (Note: music video link... 56k-er's & people who can't play music in their office beware.)

Oink oink oink.

Apparently you are NOT supposed to eat them.

Typically, people who swallow clips are elderly. The clips tend to snag on the small bowel lining, which causes obstruction or perforation. Because they are plastic, the clips do not show up on x-rays, and the patients are often unaware they have swallowed them.

Why elderly people WANT to or DO swallow these things, I have no idea. Maybe it's a new way to kill themselves off.

Thanks to Joanie for linking the story up on her site! Very cool.

And here I thought the deep mystery behind bread-tags was the color coding for each day of the week.

What the hell is wrong with some people?

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A California man accused of stealing heads and other human body parts from a local hospital and stashing them at his house, posted $10,000 bail over the weekend, police said on Monday.

See entire story here.

Safteng.net, your one-stop shop for people doing stupid sh*t with heavy lifting equipment. Not to be missed:

• I'd have to ask Damion, but I'm pretty sure they even had low-profile custom tires on this poor thing.
• Proof you don't even need a flag to work for the highway department.
• How many ways to break a leg can you spot?
• Oh I am so going to drink from that cooler now
• The longer I look at this one, the funnier it gets Tip: try to count the different ways this moron can end up dead.
• I mean, don't you want to be hoisted into the air with your basket held on with duct tape?
• I've heard of speed bumps, but this is ridiculous
• Do you think "bang" is too strong a word for this?
• Bah! Depth perception is for wussies!
• Witnessing splat -ination in 3, 2, 1...

A job that pays you to yell at people for being morons. I'm glad Ellen just had a baby...

Ok, my sound card has gone south, so it'll be up to you guys to judge whether or not Silence of the Lambs -- the Musical is all that and a bottle of chianti or not. The song titles look amusing as hell.

Somehow I don't see me purchasing Bikini Pie Fight, but how they got the album cover picture is pretty interesting. Interesting in a "no-no-Ellen-don't-get-up-I-was-just-kidding-please-put-the-frying-pan-down" sort of way.

Space.com is featuring 101 Earth Facts. Find out the hottest & coldest places on the planet, the highest waterfall, how many lightning strikes ocurr worldwide every second, the history of the continents, and much more! Guiness-book style stuff, but great fun.

Thanks to Jeff for the oddities! No-Prize!

Flying Underpants!

BERLIN (Reuters) - A pair of flying underpants caused a crash on a German highway when they landed on a driver's face and blocked his view, police said Tuesday.

Kansas IS Flatter than a pancake!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Kansas really is flatter than a pancake, U.S. geographers reported on Monday. A scientific comparison of the topography of Kansas to a pancake shows the state, known for its vast, even fields, is in fact really, really flat, geographer Mark Fonstad of Southwest Texas State University and colleagues found.

Agressive Pig Sparks Helicopter Chase

BERLIN (Reuters) - German police deployed a helicopter Monday to track and kill a ferocious little pig after it attacked some cows, chasing one around a barn until it died.

-- ---.---- Delta flight 403 cleared for runway 19 Right VFR approach.

What the?

-- ---.---- Roger American 602, contact control when you have the field in sight.

This sure isn't "alternative rock's home WHFS" coming through on my Walkman. It sounds like...

-- ---.---- Virgin 509 contact Dulles approach.

I'll be damned. Standing in my garage getting ready to go out on my daily bike ride I'd stumbled onto something amazing, something really cool. The dinky little Walkman I used to occupy my brain while doing mindless laps around the neighborhood was picking up Dulles International Airport air traffic control. To someone who loves aviation, it was sort of like unrolling the morning paper and having a diamond ring fall out.

Well, a scratched and tarnished diamond ring at any rate, because the reception wasn't all that grand. If this were a "real" radio and we didn't live less than two miles from the Dulles Airport concourse, I probably wouldn't be able to hear it at all. So occasionally I'd get completely clear exchanges, but most of the time I'd end up with:

-- ---.---- American flight 102 turn ~ ex-s live in Texas, that's why I'm ~ runway 19 ~Tennesseeeeee ~ (why is it always a country music station you end up with when you don't want a radio station at all? Do people who like country end up getting Nine Inch Nails when they least expect it?)

Well, really, what could I expect from a device that was "functioning" simply because the radio equivalent of an 800 pound gorilla was flinging poo at it from three feet away? Fortunately I knew exactly what my "weapon of choice" was going to be to polish that diamond right up.

02 156.4500 This is 2123, 10-86
02 156.4500 Roger 2123 now showing you 10-86 at 13:45

"Paw-paw!! What is that?!?"

I remember it as being summer, by later events probably 1979 or 1980. I'd been drug to yet another dinner at grandma's ("I don't like visiting her," I recall saying, "she keeps trying to kiss me and she calls it 'sugar'. It's gross!" Ah, to be 11 again...) fully expecting the evening to devolve into the standard "let's see how we can get Scott in trouble this time" game my younger brother Jeff always enjoyed whenever he got particularly bored and an adult was nearby. If I can just find a good book and a room with a lock on it...

05 150.4550 mmmmBEEEEEmmm
05 150.4550 Engine 65 respond to a pulled fire alarm 153 Bowles avenue.
05 150.4550 Engine 65 roger.

It was about the size of a clock radio, had a two-foot "whip" style antenna sticking out of it like a chrome lightning bolt, and was (for the time) absolutely encrusted with switches and flashing lights. Let me tell you, to a kid who thought his Star Wars walkie-talkie was the most amazing thing on the planet, this gizmo was more incredible than Pamela Anderson's boobs (when you're 11 your priorities are different. Plus Pam was only about five at that point. Gah.)

"It's a police scanner," my grandpa said with ill-disguised glee, "you can listen to all the fire and police stations in the area with it."

"It's noisy and it keeps me up at night. I'm sorry he ever saw the thing." My grandmother, obviously, had never taken "gadget appreciation 101" in school.

But I had, and my brother had, and, amazingly, so had my mom. We all sat in front of the thing, captivated, as it occasionally burped out one astounding announcement after another.

"Goddamn you Scott Johnson, you lay a finger on this thing and so help me I'll beat your ass!"

Fast forward to Christmas of the next year. We all did pretty well, but it was my mom who'd hit the jackpot. Under the tree with her name on it was none other than a Bearcat 210 police scanner, courtesy of my granddad. What made this scanner so tempting to me was it was one of the first programmable scanners. You didn't deal with crystals or switches or any of that, you simply punched buttons and BINGO, off it went. You could even search for signals!

And there, as they say, lay the rub. In an age when you can program a washing machine for specific laundry ("No, Dave, I'm sorry. I'm afraid I can't open the door for your underwear.") it's hard to imagine anyone actually being afraid of a programmable device, but that's what my parents were around this thing. They were both patently convinced one wrong keypunch and it would simply implode, the melted remains busily burning their way to China.

"But mommmmm" 's wouldn't work either. This thing was expensive, probably $350 (when you could buy a paperback book for $2 and a double-album for $12). I couldn't sneak a tinker in either. Jeff knew a gold-plated opportunity to get big brother in trouble when he saw it, and fairly set up camp next to the thing whenever we were left alone with it. So there it sat, glowing lights whizzing by, the occasional transmission coming through it, bright blue and yellow labeled buttons sitting in the open, tragically unused for fear of "messing it up."

14 156.0505 Attention all units, be on the lookout for a white and gold 1985 Pontiac Trans Am. Suspect is believed to be involved in an assault and homicide at 1452 White Oak Street. Driver is believed to be Bud D. Driver should be considered armed and dangerous.

"Scott... wake up."

"Wha? Jesus Christ mom, I just graduated High School. I don't need to wake up this early anymore!"

"Valerie's dead."

"What?!?"

"Valerie's dead. Her dad got drunk and decided he was going to get back together with her mom. Valerie got between them and got hit with something. She's dead."

"How'd you hear about this?!?"

Owning a police scanner means you're almost always the first civilian to learn about a crime. That's part of the fun of it. It's like a 24x7 COPS program, live. You are always ahead of the media on local stories.

Sometimes, though, you forget these are real things happening to real people. If you live in a big enough metropolitan area, it might always remain not-quite-fiction. Every once in awhile though, if you're unlucky enough, it all comes rushing at you like a driverless wheat thresher.

13 154.3505 Ambulance unit 43 to dispatch. Be advised we probably have one DOA on board. The mother looks like she'll at least make it to the hospital
13 154.3505 Copy 43.

1986. Our scanner had been stashed in a closet long ago, a victim of one of the spectacular thunderstorms that regularly trundled through the area. My grandfather, however, had taken the opportunity to upgrade his old analog system with a top-of-the-line digital, complete with the soon-to-be-outlawed ability to listen in on cell phone calls. Always the true believer, he'd learned to sleep with an earplug. Criminals don't work 9-5 you know. Drove my grandmother nuts. Most of the time. Sometimes, though, it paid off.

So that's how I learned Valerie D, someone who graduated High School with me, someone who was 18 just like me, someone who grew up with me, was dead. We weren't close friends. I didn't have close friends back then. But she was definitely someone I could count on to, say, help with homework or share a band practice room with. Her clock stopped that night, violently smashed by a drunk too stupid to understand. Mine has ticked on to this day, and I wonder at it still.

28 158.5755 You'll need to load 4000 pounds on B14

E-bay is a wonderful thing, but can bite the unwary. There absolutely are scanners ten times as powerful as that old Bearcat that can easily fit in my pocket. Unfortunately, or perhaps predictably, the first one I snagged gets every single channel someone would want.

Except airplanes.

But, living as close as we do to Dulles, while I'm waiting on this scanner to sell and my "new" (thoroughly researched) scanner to arrive, there's plenty of non-airplane airport traffic to listen to. Most colorful are the fuelers, who seem like an extremely practical bunch always getting badgered by airlines and pilots who need a babysitter more than a gas guy.

28 158.5755 Four thousand pounds?!? Where are they going?
28 158.5755 Says here they're going to Miami.
28 158.5755 How are they supposed to make Miami with just 4000 pounds?
28 158.5755 Not our problem 32. The man wants 4000, he gets 4000.
28 158.5755 [chuckles] Remind me not to fly [deleted] any time soon.
28 158.5755 Roger that 32.

People still roll their eyes at me when I say I have a scanner. What in the early 80s was the piece of electronics to have seems now to be a holdover from the days of leg warmers and feathered hair. It's only when I put on the headphones and start repeating the stats of an ambulance run, noting the difficulty hearing it over the sirens, that they start to figure it out.

Most of all, to me scanners are a tool for understanding. You never really appreciate how busy cops or fire fighters or EMTs are until you hear them get called out every five minutes of every hour, 24 hours a day. You never really understand how something as simple as five cases of bottled water can delay a hundred and fifty people from reaching their destination. Most of all, you don't quite realize how fascinating it is to hear people go about their daily lives, never once realizing someone is "listening in".

WEIRD!

I wonder if this guy's taste for certain foods will change?

Well, once I actually started reading the site, it turned out that Hairyback.com really wasn't that bad. The guy's just trying to promote some understanding ya know. I still think Ellen will get the heebies, but that's because she's going to hell.

Just kidding! We don't call them heebies, we call them heebie-jeebies.

:)

Of course, considering the source of this story is actually in Italy, one might be a little skeptical, but I'll take whatever I can get:

Gorging pizza could help reduce the risk of certain forms of cancer -- Italian scientists say.

Technically, as I understand it, Pizza is actually an American invention, cooked up by a guy in Little Italy around 1910. But still...

Well, you knew it was only a matter of time before someone came up with it. First we had "re-virginizing", now we have uncircumcising. You just can't make stuff like this up.

New scientist has this article detailing some recent findings on stem cell research. Turns out stem cells from the brain trigger no immune response when implanted into a different host. In rats anyway. Still, interesting implications for transplant research.

BBCnews is carrying this article summarizing some recent theories on planet formation. Notwithstanding the super-old planet they found a few weeks ago, these guys say the first generation of stars probably couldn't have planets around them. Seems you need a lot of metal to make planets, and these early stars just didn't have any.

The History of the Razor told by Dave Barry.

The Internet tells us that humans have been shaving since the Stone Age. Of course, the Internet also tells us that hot naked women want to befriend us, so we can't be 100% sure about everything we read there. But assuming that www.quikshave.com/timeline.htm is telling the truth, Neanderthal Man used to pluck his facial hairs "using two seashells as tweezers."

This article is for all of you out there with your own telescopes.

Brought to you by By Joe Rao
Special to SPACE.com

My brother sent this to me via email.

1.At lunch time, sit in your parked car with sunglasses on and point a hairdryer at passing cars. See if they slow down.
2.Page yourself over the intercom, don't disguise your voice.
3.Every time someone asks you to do something, ask if they want that super sized.
4.Put your garbage can on your desk and label it "IN".
5.Put decaf in the coffee maker for 3 weeks.Once everyone has gotten over their caffeine addictions, switch to espresso.
6.In the memo field of all of your checks, write "for Sexual favors".
7.Finish all of your sentences with "in accordance with the prophecy".
8.Don't use punctuation
9.AS often as possible, skip rather than walk.
10.Ask people what gender they are.
11.Specify that your drive through order is "to go".
12.Sing along at the opera.
13.Go to a poetry recital and ask why the poems don't rhyme.
14.Put mosquito netting around you work area and play a tape of jungle sounds all day.
15.Five days in advance, tell your friend that you can't attend their party because you are not in the mood.
16.Have your co-workers address you by your wrestling name, "Rock Hard".
17.When the money comes out of the ATM, scream "I WON I WON! 3RD TIME THIS WEEK".
18.When you are leaving the zoo, start running towards the parking lot, yelling"Run For your lives, they're loose!!"
19.Tell your children over dinner, "Due to the economy, we are going to have to let one of you go".

Awhile back Damion and I had a conversation about the best way to soup up a Honda Civic to beat an 02 Pontiac Trans AM (why so specific? Oh, no reason.) The goal was the most horsepower with the least number of modifications. To wit:

D: well, what about the stock engine w/ the solid state rocket in the back?
D: that's stock with (1) performance mod

I still ain't lightin' no fuse.

Update: Not to be missed: dangerous projects.

If you try to learn a foreign language in school, you learn all about vocabulary and pronunciation and syntax and all the other crap that makes your head explode without actually teaching you anything important. It's only when you learn it from another person that you get the good stuff up front... how to swear and pick up women (or men, if you prefer). You may not be able to ask the gentleman in the seat next to you what he thinks of today's headline in "Die Welt", but by god he'll know what a fucktard he is. Even if you don't want him to!

To further this mis-education, we're happy to present Insultmonger.com, wherein even you can create new and innovative combinations of insults and profanity! Endorsed by none other than our very own webmistress, a licensed and bonded professional swearer*.

* Defined as one who can say "f*ck" four times in a single sentence without thinking about it.

You'd think that something called Mr. Brain's Faggots would be some sort of Engrish-ism for, I don't know, baby wipes or something. You'd be wrong. I'm sure everyone in the UK is already rolling their eyes, but apparently, according to the web site anyway, it's some sort of ball-shaped pork product. Once I saw that their "Faggot Family" was called "Doody", I started to smell (as it were) a rat. If someone over there can confirm or deny the existence of this... well, "food", it'd be appreciated.

Proving that "politics for the sake of politics" is alive and well in the land of cheese eating surrender monkeys, we have this little tidbit:

Goodbye "e-mail", the French government says, and hello "courriel" — the term that linguistically sensitive France is now using to refer to electronic mail in official documents.

Remember folks, these are the people setting their political system up as an alternative to America's.

The casualties along the airport road have occurred during a string of attacks that have killed 34 U.S. soldiers in Iraq since May 1. A soldier was killed today when his convoy was hit by rocket-propelled grenades on a highway just west of here.

--Washington Post, July 17, 2003

At least 79 U.S. troops have died in Iraq since Bush announced an end to major fighting May 1. Of those, 32 have been killed by hostile fire and 47 were victims of non-hostile fire or accidents.

--CNN.com, July 11, 2003

The solider was at least the 34th killed since major combat operation ended May 1, and the 149th to die in combat since the war began. Counting accidents, 226 Americans have died in the war, which began a day shy of four months ago.

--CBSnews.com, July 18, 2003

Dreaded calls continue to arrive in the still of night.

This week alone, nine soldiers died and another dozen were wounded. Among the dead were Sgt. Michael B. Quinn, 37, who went to high school, married and lived in the Tampa area before reenlisting in November 1994, and Sgt. Thomas F. Broomhead, 34, who was raised in Fort Myers.

--WMBBTV.com (a local news station in Panama City, FL), May 30, 2003

Two months after President Bush declared major combat over in Iraq, stealthy enemies are still killing and wounding American and allied soldiers - five killed and 22 wounded in May, 20 killed and 39 wounded in June.

--Knight Ridder News Service, June 30, 2003

It's depressing, isn't it? We went to all that effort, spent all that money, lost all those men and women, and now we're losing the peace. Every time you pick up a newspaper, turn on a TV, or listen to a radio, you hear it over and over and over again... US troops are getting killed constantly, nothing's going right in Iraq, and no real progress is being made. We might as well pack up and head out before we're inflicted with another Mogadishu or, even worse, Vietnam.

It's crap. Crap perpetrated by a press corps far more interested in a career-enhancing story than in providing an even balance of reporting. Pictures of blood splattered humvees and tear-stained parents sell. Stories of bomb-throwing taxi drivers and clerics preaching Jihad against the infidel sell. The consequences these stories have on the moral of a nation doesn't sell. The implications these stories have on perceptions of progress don't sell. What these stories do to the overall effort of rebuilding a nation we spent the blood of our own on don't sell.

And of course, if it doesn't sell, the media doesn't care about it.

Let's do a little fact checking on our own, shall we? The media love to intone the statistics of dead soldiers in the occupation of Iraq, ticking off the numbers with deep sincerity every single chance they get. But listen carefully. For the longest time the statistic was combat and accidents. In other words, to the press corps a kid getting killed by an Iraqi with an RPG is comparable to a different kid getting killed by a crate of tank treads falling on him. This is a distinction important enough it deserves repeating: to the press, accident and combat fatalities are the same thing.

What we're not getting, unsurprisingly, is any sort of perspective about these numbers. The Army is a dangerous place in the best of times. Working with stuff designed to blow up on purpose usually is. To demonstrate this, let's take a look at just how dangerous it is to work in the army on, as they say, "any given Sunday" by checking out the fatality rate for the past nine years (source):

Please note that, like the media, I'm lumping all army fatalities in here. So let's compare it with the last "real" war the media seems to take seriously, Vietnam (source):

Again, lumping both combat and "non-combat" casualties.

For comparison, the total number of fatalities for the army in FY 02-03, including combat and accidents, stands at approximately 344. That's 151 fatalities during the war (source), and 193 accidental deaths since October of 2002 (source).

So, what does it all mean? Well, depends on how you look at it. If we look only at accidents, the current fatality rate is high, but not extraordinarily so. If we look only at combat fatalities, the current rate is almost unbelievably low, especially when compared to the last occupation-style operation in which a comparable number of troops were involved.

Most importantly it means the press is focusing on the wrong thing. The media has an incredibly important role to play in the reconstruction of Iraq. Vietnam turned into a debacle in no small part because nobody was watching the people in charge to make sure they were doing a good job. We need the press to keep us informed, to act as a watchdog against bureaucratic excess and failure when it happens, and act as a promoter of ideas that work and people who come up with them if they remain in obscurity. They are simply not doing this.

Each fatality is a terrible tragedy, yes, but we're in the process of rebuilding an entire nation. Where are the stories about fixing infrastructure? Where are the stories about attempts at government? Where are the stories about reconstructing the economy? While careerist pop-star wannabes are out chasing ambulances we're stuck here with no idea what's really going on.

It's not at all uncommon for our media to self-indulgently focus on the dramatic death of a single person in order to further a career. The orgy is distasteful, but in the context of, say, a natural disaster or a lurid murder the results are basically harmless.

The rules are different now. The fate of someone else's country is at stake. Like it or not, the media sets the tone for our national debates. By focusing on demoralizing tales of death and failure on the scale of a single soldier, they are actively undermining political support for a national cause which we have already paid for in blood.

It's not just the prestige of a politician, the success of a party, or the re-election of a president that's on the line here. The ultimate fate of more than 22 million people and countless future generations is now our responsibility. Of course, this is simply too big for most of our press corps to get their head around, so let's ratchet the focus down a bit. If we suffer a failure of nerve over a perceived lack of success, if we cut and run because of a seemingly endless stream of bad news, if our representatives squander their opportunities and destroy our chances with programs that just don't work, then our media will have ensured only one thing.

They will have ensured the sacrifices of all the Americans they take such ill-disguised glee in reporting, every single one of them, will have been a complete and utter waste. And if we all don't wise up to them, it might actually happen.

This is from my brother, Richie.

July 17, 2003 -- GET ready to see even more of porn queen Jenna Jameson. The world's biggest "adult actress" will be the subject of an E! "True Hollywood Story," and Times music writer Neil Strauss is ghosting her autobiography. Jameson, who lives with boyfriend Justin Sterling in Scottsdale, Ariz., dishes to Paper magazine about former flings Tommy Lee ("too affectionate for me") and Marilyn Manson ("so smart and interesting") - and says she currently has the hots for Justin Timberlake and Matthew McConaughey, the latter of whom "probably thinks I'm a stalker."

Though I will be honest, I do own porn with Jenna in them. (OMG! yes! I own XXX movies- how else can one pop in a DVD for their husband, look at your watch an say "ok, be back in 10 minutes for ya, just got to clean the kitchen a bit!")

As for my brother, he says this. "Give me a no prize for this. I've met Jenna, she's a sweetheart, give her some more exposure."

Ok, a XXX No-Prize to Rich!

Sickness and Death in the Old South gives some nice overviews of burial customs in the southern US. Includes lots of cool pictures (but not of dead bodies, so don't worry/sorry to disappoint).

My daughter will eventually be able to make fun of the way I looked in college, but at least she won't find any pictures of me dressed like this (although Ellen may be a different story... I seem to recall seeing white belts and leg warmers buried in her closet in New York).

Ah hell, who am I kidding. By the time she's a teenager they'll be wearing this stuff again. When I saw my teenage sister-in-law Nina wandering around in bell bottoms (YES, BELL BOTTOMS. FLARES ARE WHAT YOU KEEP IN A BOAT) I decided anything was possible.

New Scientist has this article summarizing what sounds to me like an awfully propeller-headed way to get a portable source of water:

Parched soldiers could one day drink from the exhaust pipes of their jeeps, trucks and tanks, thanks to a gadget being developed by a British defence lab. It harvests water and then filters it until it is drinkable.

"But officer! I wasn't speeding, I was just thirsty!"

Problem: Wedding date conflicts with work schedule. Solution: phone it in:

International Space Station commander Yuri Malenchenko won't be standing next to his bride when he marries next month, he'll be orbiting 240 miles above the earth.

In what could be the first space wedding, Malenchenko and Ekaterina Dmitritv will wed either by phone or proxy, his bride-to-be told reporters on Thursday after getting a marriage license in a Houston suburb.

I bet the reception's going to be interesting.

Slashdot linked up this site, who's stated purpose is to "create an ability to play LAN enabled GameCube games over a wide area network (the internet)." I still haven't ponied up the $50 to get internet access for my x-box, and I don't even own a gamecube, but I know a few people who do and thought they might find this interesting.

Slashdot linked up this little ditty about how DirecTV is engaging in a particularly odious form of shakedown:

The company begins by sending the equipment-purchaser a letter, sometimes through a local law firm, citing a hefty sack of federal statues that outlaw piracy or possession of signal theft equipment. The letter gives the recipient a deadline of a couple of weeks to contact DirecTV, or face litigation and possible damages of $100,000 or more.

If the recipient calls the phone number on the letter, they're given a settlement offer [of $3500]. If they don't pay up, or if they ignore the letter entirely, another letter arrives in the mail as a reminder that settling with the company is the only way to resolve the matter "without either of us incurring significant legal costs." If the recipient still doesn't play ball, the company makes good on its threat and files a lawsuit. At that point, the settlement price tag jumps to $10,000 -- still less than the typical cost of paying a lawyer to go to trial against a corporate powerhouse in federal court.

The slashdot collective commenting on this one included some "people who knew the people", and the consensus seemed to be that as soon as someone actually fights one of these things (and does it properly) then they all go away. That's why we're linking the story up... if anyone out there gets one of these shakedown notes, fight it. Bullies are powerful because hardly anyone challenges them. When the entire neighborhood turns on them the bully is no more.

Personally I'm amazed at how people respond to letters like this. I learned a long, long time ago that the only serious collection letters are the ones that are sent via registered mail. Credit ratings are "nice to haves", and are not on the same level as oxygen or food, which is how most people seem to treat them.

I spent nearly a decade on the receiving end of collection notes so nasty you'd think they were going to take my firstborn child in the night if I didn't pay up. Ellen was forbidden to pick up my mail because she'd flip out every time I got one. People were aghast when I told them my credit rating was completely in the toilet, made me feel like I had a scarlet "C" on my chest. I ignored them all and you know what? From a day-to-day point of view it had zero effect on me.

Oh I'm not proud of it, and, with Ellen's patient help, everything was eventually rehabilitated. But to this day I chuckle a little at how people get the vapors when they get a collection notice from their book club threatening to "ruin their good credit."

I don't know, somewhere along the line I missed the big story about US doctors refusing to treat Iraqi children a few weeks ago, but Bigwig didn't. He decided to find out just what was what by using that most remarkable of methods... he asked:

Remember the story of U.S. doctors refusing to treat Iraqi children from a couple of weeks ago? Here's a synopsis, for those unwilling to part company from us for even a moment.

Sgt. David Borell tried to get U.S. Army doctors to treat three injured Iraqi children, only to have them refuse.

Like most, I bought into the story. However, I also wrote to Major David Accetta, the Public Affairs Officer for the 3D Corps Support Command to see if there was another side to the story.

Today I got a response back.

What he got back was heartfelt, surprisingly honest, and very illuminating.

Ok, all those things I said about how weird my mom is? I take it all back:

A distraught Kazakh mother kept her daughter's mummified corpse in her apartment for three years hoping she would be resurrected by aliens, police said on Thursday.

Very sad. Very weird.

No-prize to Jeff!

BBCnews has this story on one of the more bizzare formations in the universe... gigantic, nearly starless galaxies. You look for galaxies with radio telescopes and sometimes you get huge hydrogen signatures, yet when you look at the same area with a regular telescope you see nearly nothing. Nobody's completely sure why they don't form stars like everything else.

Here is a bit more detailed information on the Meowlingual.

Funny thing is that your cat does not wear it. You actually have to hold it up to your cat and hope that he will talk into it!

Thanks to Rich and Dianne for both sending me the story this morning! No-Prizes!

Well, someone out there might be interested in in the "sensual" art of caning. I'm just not sure who.

Well, ok, I might know one or two people. We try not to move suddenly when we're around them though.

Jeff gets a double-sided no prize for bringing this double-fisted report on new developments in the Jimmy Hoffa case and... wait for it... the Loch Ness Monster:

Just as authorities were digging into a Michigan back yard yesterday with renewed hope of finding James R. Hoffa -- whose middle initial stands for Riddle -- Scottish scientists were conferring on the discovery of bones matching those of the Loch Ness monster.

Investigative reporting at its finest. At least this one's not sniffing around Baghdad hoping another G.I. gets blown up so they can make their deadline.

Larry asks the eternal question:

How can one tell if their cat is smart, stupid, or somewhere in between? By what standard is a cat's intelligence judged?

My wife's answer would probably be simple if I asked her... "All cats are brilliant. Dumbass."

I think cats are situationally brilliant. Well, at least some of them. I've got five who get free room, board, medical care, and freedom to crap and yak wherever they please. How brilliant is that? However, I'm pretty sure that's not what he's talking about. I'd judge their smarts by balancing the stupid things they did against the smart ones. Whichever end of the ratio is larger is how you judge their brains.

So, for example, when Ajax rolls off the end of the bed, that's an entry in the "dumb" column. When he stomps on Ellen's bladder in the morning to get some food, that's an entry in the "smart" column.

Ah hell, what do I know. They sure trained my wife well, I'll say that.

Ellen's fascinated by dark matter, that mysterious stuff astronomers think might compose more than 70% of the universe, so I'm sure she'll be interested in this RedNova report on a new effort to measure dark matter on an intergalactic scale. By studying a very large and very distant galatic cluster, astronomers are able to use gravitational lensing to make a more accurate study of the dark matter within the system. I was most impressed by this:

Despite its distance of 4.5 thousand million light-years (about one third of the look-back time to the Big Bang) from Earth, this massive cluster is wide enough to equal the angular size of the full Moon.

If that doesn't make you feel small then you're not paying attention.

In the never-ending quest to build a better mouse trap, we have this entry summarized by New Scientist:

A chocolate-scented mousetrap has been developed by UK scientists to catch the pests without the need for bait.

Contrary to popular belief, mice are more attracted to the scent of chocolate than the more traditional mouse-bait cheese, or other aromas like vanilla essence, according to Sorex Ltd, a manufacturer of rodent control products based in Cheshire, UK.

Let's hope they don't scale it up too large. I'd never see my wife or mother again!

I was up until midnight fixing the mess my work made of some stuff that affected the entire nationwide organization, so they're in time out right now. No e-mail, no contact for... well, until I feel like messing with them again. If you need to contact me use the e-mail address on the left there, otherwise it may take a day or two for me to get back to you.

And all this time I thought it was protestants who were hard-core:

Court papers filed last month say Rev Scott Mansfield said at Martinez's funeral last year that the deceased was "living in sin", "lukewarm in his faith" and that "the Lord vomited people like Ben out of his mouth to hell".

...

One of the plaintiffs says the townspeople "are staring at her, thinking her father is in hell".

I do remember attending one of Ellen's friend's wedding and being rather impressed at the dressing-down the priest gave the couple while they stood at the alter. He didn't approve of them living together before marriage, and got in several shots to make his point.

Jeff sent this to me from Snopes.com

Scott and I were listening to The Don and Mike radio show yesterday and this was one of the topics. Scott said under no circumstances would he play paintball without some eye goggles or head gear. There was no mention to whether or not he would play naked though.

One of my friends sent me this in an email this morning.

Law of Cat Inertia: A cat at rest will tend to remain at rest, unless acted upon by some outside force -- such as the opening of cat food, or a nearby scurrying mouse.

Law of Cat Acceleration: A cat will accelerate at a constant rate, until he gets good and ready to stop.

Law of Cat Motion: A cat will move in a straight line, unless there is a really good reason to change direction.

Law of Cat Landing: A cat will always land in the softest place possible; often the mid-section of an unsuspecting, reclining human.

First Law of Energy Conservation: Cats know that energy can neither be created nor destroyed and will, therefore, use as little energy as possible.

Law of Bag / Box Occupancy: All bags and boxes in a given room must contain a cat within the earliest possible nano- second.

Law of Cat Composition: A cat is composed of Matter + Anti- Matter + It Doesn't Matter.

Law of Cat Disinterest: A cat's interest level will vary in inverse proportion to the amount of effort a human expends in trying to interest him.

Law of Cat Elongation: A cat can make her body long enough to reach just about any counter top that has anything remotely interesting on it.

Law of Cat Embarrassment: A cat's irritation rises in direct proportion to her embarrassment times the amount of human laughter.

Law of Cat Magnetism: All blue blazers and black sweaters attract cat hair in direct proportion to the darkness of the fabric.

Law of Cat Obstruction: A cat must lay on the floor in such a position to obstruct the maximum amount of human foot traffic.

Law of Cat Sleeping: All cats must sleep with people whenever possible, in a position as uncomfortable for the people involved as is possible for the cat.

Law of Cat Stretching: A cat will stretch to a distance proportional to the length of the nap just taken.

Law of Cat Thermo-dynamics: Heat flows from a warmer to a cooler body, except in the case of a cat, in which case all heat flows to the cat.

Law of Dinner Table Attendance: Cats must attend all meals when anything good is served.

Law of Electric Blanket Attraction: Turn on an electric blanket and a cat will jump into bed at the speed of light.

Law of Fluid Displacement: A cat immersed in milk will displace her own volume, minus the amount of milk consumed.

Law of Furniture Replacement: A cat's desire to scratch furniture is directly proportional to the cost of the furniture.

Law of Milk Consumption: A cat will drink his weight in milk, squared, just to show you he can.

Law of Obedience Resistance: A cat's resistance varies in proportion to a human's desire for her to do something.

Law of Pill Rejection: Any pill given to a cat has the potential energy to reach escape velocity.

Law of Random Comfort Seeking: A cat will always seek, and usually take over, the most comfortable spot in any given room.

Law of Refrigerator Observation: If a cat watches a refrigerator long enough, someone will come along and take out something good to eat.

Law of Rug Configuration: No rug may remain in its naturally flat state for very long.

Second Law of Energy Conservation: Cats also know that energy can only be stored by a lot of napping.

FLATULENCE is responsible for the death of hundreds of cattle exported to the Middle East each year.

Cows gas themselves to death by emitting fatally high levels of ammonia during the lengthy voyages, a University of New England conference has heard.

Read entire story here.

Jeff brings us this story on a new gadget to interpret what your cat is saying to you.

Takara Co, a major Japanese toy maker, said on Wednesday it would launch a device called the "Meowlingual" that can interpret a cat's meow, hoping to repeat its success with the "Bowlingual," a dog translation device.

Scott says all our cats would ever say would be: " I'm hungry!, No! Not that flavor of canned food! or You really think I want to take a shit in that dirty box? I think I'll go use the carpet instead."

Canadian Press
Jul. 15, 2003 05:15 PM

CRANBROOK, Canada - A family awoke Tuesday to find their cat nursing two mice - along with her seven week-old kittens.

Read entire story here.

Ok, hunting for prostitutes is f*&k'd up!*

More shocking than anything you've ever seen before. Labeled by CBS News as a cross between Sex and Violence a deadly combination! Women are being hunted down like animals and shot with paintball guns. This Raw and completely Uncensored video is a cross between Bum Fights and Girls Gone Wild and is sure to be the topic of many Howard Stern Show fans. You will be completely stunned when you see some of the wildest, most outrageous moments ever caught on tape. This is without a doubt one of the sickest and most shocking videos ever made. When it comes to hunting women if you can think of it we probably show it. Women are screaming with fear as our Team Bambi hunters track them down and blast them with paintball guns...

Here's where it gets real good.

If you would like to fly out to wonderful fun filled Las Vegas, Nevada for the hunt of a lifetime now is your chance. You can actually hunt one of our Bambi sluts and shoot her with paintballs while we film the whole thing and tape it for your own home video. We will send you a complete list of wall hangers to choose from once your reservation is confirmed for your hunt. With over 30 women ready to be chased down and shot like dogs we guarantee a wide variety of Bambi’s to choose from. Whether it is a fat ass cow or a perfect 10 we have an abundance of these beauties. So if you are the ultimate sportsman and are seeking the ultimate adrenaline rush then come out to our ranch and shoot one of these nagging whinny bitches where it hurts and shut her the fuck up. Then mount her like a "Real Man".

Private hunt includes:
· Round Trip Airfare for hunter
· Lodging for hunter (3 Days 4 Nights)
· Meals for hunter
· The Hunt
· Video of the Hunt
· Mount (not for virgins, you figure it out)
Price: $10,000.00 U.S.
Deposit: $2,500.00 U.S. ** NON- REFUNDABLE**

I wonder what the mileage terms are:

Lovers of Swiss cheese can now lease their own cow on an Alpine pasture to provide the personal touch that store-bought products just can't offer.

If you stick a cow's ass up on blocks and make them walk backward, does it violate that agreement too?

Nevermind folks... blood sugar dropping... move along, move along...

so much for catapults:

British police charged two men with manslaughter Tuesday following the death of an Oxford University student who was flung from a giant catapult.

And to think all this time I thought it was bungee jumping that was crazy...

My brother sent me this joke in an email

She married and had 13 children.

Her husband died.

She married again and had 7 children.

Again, her husband died.

But, she re-married and this time she had 5 more children.

Alas, she finally died.

Standing before her coffin the preacher prayed for her, he thanked The Lord for this loving woman and said, " Lord they're finally together."

One mourner leaned over and quietly asked her friend, "Do you think he means her first, second or third husband?"

The friend replied, " I think he means her legs."

I found this recipie this morning on Glam Gal Magazine.com

Fruity Lip Gloss
Ingredients:
2 Tbls solid shortening
1 Tbls fruit-flavored powdered drink mix
35 mm film container
Procedure:
Mix shortening & drink mix together in a microwave safe bowl till smooth.
Place in microwave on high for 30 seconds until mix becomes a liquid.
Pour into clean film container, or any other small airtight container.
Place mix into fridge for 20-30 minutes or till firm!

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A police cat who proved adept at sniffing out fish smugglers in southern Russia could be honoured with a memorial plaque after dying in the line of duty, one of his former owners says.

Read entire story here

Thanks to Jeff for the latest update on this story! Kitty No-Prize to you!

A brunette ALL computer geeks out there would love to get a bit virtual with.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Two Russian nudists were struck by lightning on Friday at a beach on the Moscow river as they took cover from a thunderstorm under a tree, the emergencies ministry said.

Let's look at that statement for a moment. " Took cover under a tree." During a thunderstorm? Last time I watched a Weather Channel Storm Story, you should not take cover under a tree. No wait, I think I learned that rule in grade school.

See entire story here.

I know I have linked this site before, but it looks like it has been revamped a bit and not everyone sending in pixes of their cats are being total dickheads. They are actually getting creative!

Thanks to Joshua for sending the link to My Cat Hates You.com

You get the bad ass Kitty No-Prize of the day!

Everyone's heard of why, exactly, women seem to enjoy sitting on the washing machines when they're in the laundramat. Now you can figure out just which combination of things... ummm... "washes" best.

Note Safe for work only if you have headphones. Pictures are fine, sound is not. :)

The first test version of 2.6 is out! If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry, you won't be interested. It does mean I get a new (free!) toy to tinker with (i.e. blow up) on my computer. A typically inscruitable "newbies change log" is here. Yes, that's what the Linux crowd thinks is an informative summary of "what's new."

Well don't this just beat all:

Women are more likely than men to lie about their sex lives, reveals a new study. Women's coyness about their sexual behaviour was unveiled by a US study involving a fake lie detector test.

I have yet to meet a woman that couldn't lie with a face so serene it could be chisled marble. I'm amazed they didn't try to beat the lie detector.

Seems like our politicians aren't even in the same league as Japan's when it comes to saying stupid things. Of course, if a US Senator went on the record saying Palestinians are a bunch of terrorists or that Japan's government is hopelessly corrupt it'd be on the front page of every newspaper in the area.

Also note that saying stupid things garners even less punishment in Japan than it does here. In some ways human beings are an awful lot alike.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A wild red fox was the likely predator that got into a bald eagle's enclosure at the National Zoo and killed the bird, zoo officials said this week.

Ok, the media is being really stupid now. A 'wild' fox? Aren't all or rather 99% of them wild? Or are there domesticated foxes out there lurking the quiet neighborhoods at night?

Read entire article here.

What we have learned about life and the baby in the past 2 weeks:

1. Babies cry. A lot.
2. We have been told that, compared to others, our baby is rather quiet.
3. This frightens us.
4. No matter what the books tell you, your baby is going to do the opposite!
5. Whoever figured out that babies will 'soil' 7-10 diapers a day was nuts.
6. We are almost done with our first pack of 228 diapers.
7. Sam's Club "cube o' diapers" is an essential part of your baby's kit.
8. Babies are poop factories.
9. The poop factory uses a diaper change as the signal to change shifts.
10. It is a very good idea to keep a diaper, any diaper, under a baby's butt at all times.
11. Baths are fun.
12. Babies like to fart in the tub. A lot.
13. Babies get this look of astonished accomplishement when they fart.
14. Pooping naked on a towl is much better than having it smear up your back, and mommy makes really funny faces if you time it just right.
15. Cats (thank god) do not like to raid diaper pails. They're afraid of them.
16. A baby wipe warmer is extremely handy. Imagine your ass being wiped with a cold,wet cloth at night. Now make it warm. Which do you prefer?
17. Pumping milk does not give your husband the right to walk past you in the bathroom and go "Moo".
18. "Does it come in chocolate?" is only funny when you say it on the inside.
19. The breast pump is not a fog horn.
20. Breast pads are not coasters.
21. Breast pads are not frizbees.
22. Breast pads are not dead mouse substitutes. Cats bringing them down for presentations to guests are not amusing.
23. Dr. Sears's,baby sling is the best invention in the whole world!
24. Boobs become 24-hour Diners. The only thing missing is the 50-year-old blonde waitress.
25. Grandmas who act like 24-hour diner waitresses during baby feedings are not amusing.
26. Breastfeeding means your husband has to share.
27. Socks are impossible to keep on a baby.
28. The washing machine has eaten a baby sock already. Or was it the dryer?
29. Cats will not eat leftover baby formula. They will eat nasty red fish-like substances from cans (complete with cheddar bits), but they are NOT fooled by fake milk.
30. Olivia smiles. Scott thinks it's just gas.
31. Admit you will never have a good night's sleep for a long time.
32. Appreciate naps.
33. Waking up a husband in the middle of the night to change a baby can have interesting consequences. Sometimes a cat gets tossed in a closet, sometimes a baby is handed back only half changed, sometimes all he returns with is a bottle.
34. Let the husband take the 5 am - 10 am shift instead.
35. The bassinet, for now, is an expensive and pretty cat bed.
36. Well, Ajax thinks so anyway.

They mystery of the beached blob solved!

SANTIAGO, Chile (Reuters) - Chilean scientists say their study of a huge blob of flesh found on a Pacific beach about three weeks ago has found it is the carcass of a sperm whale, ending speculation of a giant octopus.

We know where we will be taking Olivia for her first inking!

This just sucks

Curiosity DID NOT kill the cat, the damn Russian with the f*&king car did.

All this over a damn fish.

New Dialog!

New Cast!

New Hope!!!

One of the funniest Star Wars parody sites I've seen since "Troopers". Be sure not to miss the trailers!

WEEEEEEeeeeee!!!

The latest photos of Olivia are up on BlueLens. Go check them out!

~Especially if you want to see baby in the bathtub photos!*

*Totally Safe For Work- no kiddie porn here you sick F*&K.

*Under XXX due to the dental floss bikini*

Scott and I are currently playing Outlaw Golf and Outlaw Volleyball. One of the things that we have noticed is that one of our favorite characters, Summer, who is a stripper gets raunchier with each game.

My brother, Richie led us to this site. Apparently Summer is taken off of a real person.

Not only that, the site has recipies, a "Dear Summer" section, movies, and of course, music.

A string bikini No-Prize to Rich!

Jeff sends us this story .

NEW YORK (AP) - Robert Fick had a simply purrfect day at Shea Stadium.

The Braves first baseman hit an RBI single, scored two runs and his team won. Oh, he also found himself a new pet.

Atlanta was taking the field for batting practice Tuesday night when Fick saw something furry in the grass right outside the third-base dugout.

No-Prize to Jeff!

Here is the latest toy tested out by Sue Johansens crew on Oxygen's Talk Sex.

This vibrator will really bug you! The Clitterbug is extremely powerful, and you can apply the "head" or "feet" to any sensitive areas on your body (or your lover's). This toy is 7" long, and features multi-speed vibration.

~ This toy is TRASH according to Sue. Don't get it. Though the thing reminds me of that game that you have to build the bugs out of plastic bits.

Slashdot noted in this article that CVN-76, USS Ronald Regan, will be comissioned tomorrow. The latest in a long line of Nimitz-class carriers, it sports tons of new improvements and technologies. The next generation of aircraft carriers are (eventually) detailed in this article, which mentions things like electromagnetic catapults and directed energy weapons (aka [pinky to mouth]frikken lasers[/pinky to mouth]).

I don't care what anyone else thinks. Making 4.5 acres of real estate move around is just flat cool. Period.

New Scientist has this report summarizing the results of some new experiments regarding how the brain moves the body. Turns out our brains use prediction to help figure out what sort of force is needed to obtain a certain result. It also appears that our brains tend to underestimate the force needed, and this may be why kids tend to get into shoving matches for no reason at all. It could also open up new avenues of research for schizophrenia.

This is just nasty.

The economy is down, unemployment is on the rise, but people are as horny as ever. This has led to more and more folks economizing in the bedroom. Whether its the Good Will, Yard Sales, or the recycling bin the hunt is on for sex toys - almost new, handy man's specials, or as-is. Not all toys are amenable to reuse, and not all toys can be refurbished, so Uncle Melon put together this guide, breaking down selection and assessment into several easy steps.

They're LIVE, They're NUDE, They're CATS!

Frolicking Furry Feline Photos Inside!

*May not be suitable for work. *

Ok, I've heard of "filling the bowl", but this is ridiculous:

A pet python missing over the last two months made its reappearance by scaring a Dutch woman when it slithered out of her toilet bowl.

If this happened at my house there'd be one of those cartoon-cutout silhouettes in my bedroom wall. On the 2nd floor.

Yeah, we know, lack of updates again. We're not dead yet! Just having trouble finding the quality slack time required to write stuff up.

Oh, and Outlaw Volleyball is the raunchiest thing we've seen in a video game in a long time.

I spotted this one on Fox news this morning, but BBCnews has an even better article. The Hubble telescope has found the oldest planet discovered to date. Much older than previously expected. What's more, this particular planet has lead a very adventurous life over the past 10 billion years or so.

The mystery of Stonehenge solved?

TORONTO, Canada (Reuters) -- Stonehenge is a massive female fertility symbol, according to Canadian researchers who think they have finally solved the mystery of the ancient monument in southern England.

Science@NASA -- Something is happening on Mars and it's so big you can see it through an ordinary backyard telescope.

On July 1st a bright dust cloud spilled out of Hellas Basin, a giant impact crater on Mars' southern hemisphere. The cloud quickly spread and by the Fourth of July was 1100 miles wide--about one-fourth the diameter of Mars itself.

Read entire article here . Complete with pictures!

Hey, just because you're in a wheel chair doesn't mean you can't get some. Even if you're a dog!

Seasonal change on Pluto is causing the planet to warm up even as it moves away from the Sun, according to two studies that also detected the first firm signs of weather on the tiny planet.

In a deeper analysis of data first announced in October, researchers now say Pluto's atmospheric pressure doubled since 1988. They say the average global temperature must have climbed, too, by about 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius).

Read entire article here.

And anyone who wants to take a shot at exactly what this is all about is also welcome to it.

D: ok, thats messed up. some mean looking yakuza dude ate my car.

Hey, unlike Microsoft, the latest release of NaDa (0.5) actually does what it says.

Asian TV does it again with this live-action matrix-style ping-pong game. It's like the gong show, only cool.

Jeff gets an extremely tiny no-prize for bringing us this new Scientific American article on nanotech and human organ development. Looks like we're one step closer to actually making functioning hearts, kidneys, and livers.

A place to go to discuss cats!

Thanks to Pam! You get the Kitty No-Prize! =^^=

NEW YORK (AP) - After years of saying she'd wait until she was married to lose her virginity, Britney Spears is acknowledging that she had sex with her ex-boyfriend, Justin Timberlake.

Ok, who out there did not know she was obviously not a virgin?

See entire article Posted by Ellen at 04:53 PM | Comments (2)