Category: Uncategorized

I don’t know if this is any good or not, but the facial expressions alone make me have to hear the whole thing. I also forgot my iPod at home today, so no headphones for the ole ‘puter.

Nutri-grain Ad – ebaumsworld.com

This guy has it down. What better way to generate traffic than to make your (hilarious) comic about a hitman who only takes contracts on pets. Very funny stuff. Check it out.

UPDATE: Oops, it’s two guys: Jason Salsbury and Matt Kaufenberg. Should read a little bit before posting.

Since that last post was out of nowhere, I thought I would right the mood.

Here’s a picture of a puppy.

I try not to be vulgar on this thing, on the off chance that someone reading it thinks me a witless wonder. (They can easily make that conclusion without four-letter words.) So, I will mention that later in this post I will be using some profanity, but all in the course of making a point. And, as Billie Connelly said, if you don’t like, you can fuck off.

There is a growing attitude in the press, on the blogs, in the air that this country is suddenly some kind of theocracy. I read this post by David Galbraith and almost lost it. In making his point, he not only invokes Godwin’s law, he sounds like a fool. But the issue really is that he’s only a small voice in a larger choir of idiots who are so hung up on the President’s personnel politics, that they are falling for the whole sinker as well as the hook.

Here’s a memo to all the people who are obsessive about the coming Theocracy: there isn’t one. There never will be one. You want to know why? Because of people like me and the thousands of kids who grew up just like me, oppressed, suppressed and pissed. I grew up in the heart of religious hypocrisy, West Michigan. You couldn’t mow your lawn on Sunday until I was in high school for Chrissake. When Meijer’s opened on Sundays, people boycotted the place. My parents had to leave a church because they sent me to public school. Yeah, I know what it’s like.

And all the lather-mouthed, finger-quivering, know-more-than-yous have it all wrong. The community I grew up in doesn’t want a theocracy. In fact they’d storm Congress if they tried to install one, not out of principal, but for the simple fact that if any religion got chosen, it would be the wrong religion.

The President and his cronies have you in a strangle hold. You’re so damn preoccupied with fighting back some figment of your own imagination, their getting away with far worse. They don’t want all the stuff they keep throwing out there, they want you to self-destruct. They want you to tear yourselves apart by thrashing around in disgust. They want you to compare the current administration to the Third Reich because the imagery of that analogy is so powerful, you can’t see that it’s FUCKING WRONG. If you seriously consider for a single brief moment that this administration in this country is even remotely capable (logistically or otherwise) of implementing a holocaust-style regime… wow, that’s some fabulously fucked up thinking.

Here’s my favorite quote from David Galbraith: (aside: I will stop quoting David as I don’t mean to pick on him, he just parrots so much of this rhetoric, and he’s high on alphabetical list of feeds.)

To deny the fact of evolution and deprive people an education because of a particular belief not shared by everybody, is equivalent to the shameful historical revisionism by anti-Semites who wish to rewrite history because of their own ideological agenda.

That’s right, kiddies. Holding different beliefs about the origin of life is equivalent to murdering over 6 million people. I’ll simplify that. Belief = murder.

One last thing before I hit Mark All Read and remind myself that I keep that feed to keep my perspective. For all the browbeating about how much the Religious Right (whatever that means) forces on people, I have never in my life had so many cultural mores shoved at me than when I moved to a “progressive” town. Makes me pine for the idiocy of the religious in this state. At least they go away when you tell them to fuck off.

Check out Area 51 from the air, courtesy of Google Maps.

[via Sploid]

I stumbled across Alan Gutierrez’ blog this evening thanks to the aggregator over at ArborBlogs. Alan seems like one of those kindred spirits that I knew existed in this town, but often kept to themselves out of fear of “a tirade against a red-state,” as Alan puts it.

That post isn’t what made me write about Alan’s site. This one is. I’ll quote because Alan nails it (sorry Ann Arbor, he’s got your number).

I started with noting how caustic Ann Arbor is. That people lack social grace, because they are Michiganders. They’re wipping past each other at 70 MPH all day. They don’t know how to say hello. That Ann Arbor is bubble, and people come here to escape the rest of Michigan, they think it is some sort of Paris of the mid-West. Ann Arbor is a bubble and people are bubble people, scared of what is outside the bubble, oddly xenophobic, while trying to seem worldly. Then I talked about having to litterally beg to differ, how thin-skinned, easily offended these people are. Then I mentioned the agenda-oriented social scene, and exaggerated gender roles. Ended up saying that the orthodoxy of Ann Arbor runs counter to mine. I feel people make the best descisions for themselves, that if you listen to them, they’ll make sense. Ann Arborites think that people can’t make decisions for themselves, and you have to tell them how wrong they are so they’ll understand.

I think Alan is like me; here for the time being because this is where the work is. I have no loyalty to this town, I have no ties to the idiocy that this town spews forth everyday. Alan’s right: this is a place where ideas come to die, not flourish. Unfortunately (or, fortunately, depending on your perspective), there is one entity that can toss huge sums of cash at lots of people and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. This town will never be forced to gain perspective. It’s a shame, really, with the diversity that does exist on campus that Ann Arbor hasn’t found a way to integrate those philosophies into the community.

Ever since some one crammed a (dangerously simple) battery into an Altoids tin as a backup power supply for his iPod, the Me-Too crowds have been saturating the blog world with their contributions. We have the battery in a deck of playing cards, the battery in a yet-smaller Altoids case (for your mini, of course), and then the ultimate: make your own MP3 player in, yes, an Altoids case. (Sounds like Altoids has a great marketing campaign going.)

And then, today comes around and the “hacks” have started PSPs. Yes, now you can make a battery pack inside an Atari 2600 joystick. This kids is the tipping point. We are now ruining devices that are likely worth actual money (quick check on ebay says $15.00) and making battery packs that are larger, clunkier, and less functional than the device that actually needs the power. Wouldn’t be easier to, oh, I don’t know, pack along and additional set of batteries sans joystick?

In the latest hit to the West Michigan area, the most recognizable name in business (aside from Amway/Van Andel) is closing up shop. Roger’s department store announced today that, after over 50 years in the same location, they are closing down.

Roger’s is one of those places that servers a community touch point. It’s target client was mid- to high-end on the clothing scale, but they always had customers from just below. The Roger’s annual sidewalk sale was practically an city event at one point. Thousands of people would decend on the store trying to get a piece of the good life for cheap.

The sadder aspect of this closing is the loss of the businesses influence in the community. Roger’s was the corporate face of a lot of activities for a lot of years. It’s departure probably leaves a lot of charities, funds, and causes without corporate sponsorship in a business climate that hasn’t been healthy in a long time.

It’s a sad day in Grand Rapids.

Link

This is just something for future reference. You know, just in case.

[Via Engadget]

I was wrong; housing in Ann Arbor is affordable. Just look at this chart from Consumer Reports. Ann Arbor gets a “Fair Value” rating, with only an 8% differential between what’s affordable and what the market price is.

Oh, except that in the first three quarters of last year, the rate at which prices increased began to accelerate. I wonder where those $224,000 houses are? Not anywhere near downtown, I guarentee.