Pancake City

I’m breaking my No Michael Jackson jokes for this one:

Judge Says R. Kelly Must Avoid Jackson
CHICAGO - R. Kelly won’t be mingling with Michael Jackson (news) during next month’s Grammy festivities: A judge has ordered the R&B star, who is awaiting trial on child pornography charges, to stay away from the King of Pop, himself facing child molestation charges, when Kelly attends the awards.

What is the court system afraid of, that they’ll trade porn site passwords? Gab about future community service work? (”If we both get convicted, let’s build a children’s hospital.” “Great idea. I call the bedridden kids!”)

I have my own rulings for these two. R. Kelly has to change his name to “Richie Richie Roo Roo” and introduce himself by that name to every girl under 18. A similar punishment for Michael Jackson, except he has to introduce himself as “I Have No Candy” to kids and “Don’t Be a Dumbass” to gullible parents.

Dallas, Tex.: Why is it the Daily Show takes an overwhelmingly liberal stance when it comes to the elections and Democratic candidates? Shouldn’t the Daily Show be a little more unbiased? The Daily Show can still be funny yet fair at the same time.

Stephen Colbert: First, we are not news. We are under no compunction to be fair or balanced or any other thing other than funny. Second, satire always attacks the status quo. The status quo is presently a Republican executive, legislative and judicial branch. There’s hardly a liberal target left. Third, we throw hay makers at the Democratic candidates across the board. Fourth, I hope Bush loses.

(chat transcript)

I made a smiley in your likeness. I call it “The Stephen Colbert Special Edition.” Will you use it?

?`:|

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***Hope***, Michigan

I applied to be a PA for The Daily Show last month and I got a form letter saying there are no positions right now but my resume will be kept on file. Can I have my resume back? That was my only copy. I wrote it in crayon to show my sense of humor, but my friends don’t believe me. It’s eight pages long and has a picture of a green sun at the end (I THOUGHT GREEN WAS MORE CREATIVE BUT EVIDENTIALLY YOU GUYS DIdn’t.) (Ignore all the caps after “thought”.) You can COD it but please mail it under my roommate’s name (References, #7). His mom is always shipping him stuff COD.

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Dundalk, Detroit
The site says we can submit questions before or during the discussion. This isn’t a question. I just wanted to say we could send questions after the discussion if you had a time machine, jack ass.

(I started reading his chat, and I’m chagrined for sending these questions. His answers to regular questions are hilarious. I feel like the wanna-be trying to upstage him.)

5. Be disrespectful or politically incorrect in the workplace. Political correctness is a hot topic in today’s modern workplace, and most companies have zero tolerance for offensive remarks and actions. If you’ve got a humdinger of a joke but it’s just a bit offensive, it’s best to leave it home and opt for a simple knock-knock.

EMPLOYEE1: Knock-knock!
EMPLOYEE2: Who’s there?
EMPLOYEE1: Banana!
EMPLOYEE2: Banana who?
EMPLOYEE1: Banana banana fo fana. Fe fi fo fana. Banana nana be bo banana!
EMPLOYEE2: Aren’t Jewish people supposed to be funny?
JEWISH EMPLOYEE1: I can’t believe you said that. Aren’t you afraid that if you do something bad, Vishnu will give you twenty middle fingers?
INDIAN EMPLOYEE2: For one, Vishnu has four arms, not twenty. Of course, no one here expects you to know anything about religion.
ATHEIST JEWISH EMPLOYEE1: What’s that supposed to mean?
INDIAN RELIGIOUS PERSON WHO PROFESSES TOLERANCE BUT SECRETLY HATES ATHEISTS EMPLOYEE2: Nothing.
IRRITATED ATHEIST JEWISH EMPLOYEE: You have something to say? Say it. I have something to say about you too. Or should I say, you two.
INDIAN RELIGIOUS PERSON WHO PROFESSES TOLERANCE BUT SECRETLY HATES ATHEISTS, ESPECIALLY THIS ONE, WHO KNOWS ABOUT HIS AFFAIR WITH THE BOSS’S HUSBAND EMPLOYEE: You carrot-munching bastard. You wouldn’t.
IRRITATED ATHEIST JEWISH VEGETARIAN EMPLOYEE: It would be a terrible way for her to find out her husband is gay.
GAY INDIAN RELIGIOUS PERSON WHO PROFESSES TOLERANCE BUT SECRETLY HATES ATHEISTS, ESPECIALLY THIS ONE, WHO KNOWS ABOUT HIS AFFAIR WITH THE BOSS’S HUSBAND EMPLOYEE: …Your slip is showing.
IRRITATED ATHEIST JEWISH VEGETARIAN EMPLOYEE WHO IS EXTRA IRRITATED BECAUSE HIS COWORKER JUST FOUND OUT HE’S A CROSSDRESSER: My…? Oh, god. Truce?
INDIAN EMPLOYEE2: That would be acceptable.
JEWISH EMPLOYEE1: Sorry about the comments I made about your religion.
EMPLOYEE2: And I apologize about the stereotype I made about Jewish people.
EMPLOYEE1: Okay. Well, see you at lunch.
EMPLOYEE WHO WILL AVOID EMPLOYEE AT LUNCH FOR THE NEXT WEEK: Of course. See you there.

Al Franken takes down a protester.

From the Washington Post (I, um, changed a few words):

After two years of barely speaking to reporters aside from rare appearances on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Bigfoot has given eight interviews in the past month.

After taking just one foreign trip during his first three years in office, he is in the middle of a five-day swing through Switzerland and Rome.

Sunday morning, the reclusive monster even allowed journalists to photograph him sightseeing. Instead of Bigfoot’s usual silence, he remarked on his “beautiful walk through Rome” to the press between bites of his deer leg.

Republican officials said Bigfoot’s new visibility, which is likely to increase as his reelection race heats up, is partly the result of strategists’ determination that his long silences had helped make him a punching bag for Democrats and a lightning rod for criticism of President Bush over secrecy, corporate connections and reliance on advice from mythical beings.

“The theory is that the criticism is gratuitous and that we shouldn’t just accept the story line provided by the enemy,” said a GOP official familiar with the strategy. “The tabloids are going to write about you anyway, so why not be part of the process?”

Bigfoot has long been a popular administration ambassador to heartland conservatives and already spends many Mondays and Fridays raising campaign money and scaring young children. Officials say that after the Democratic nominee is chosen, Bigfoot will make frequent appearances in targeted mountain ranges that Bush cannot reach.

Mary Matalin, Bigfoot’s former groomer, said he is not raising his profile because of the campaign but is “just doing what he does best, which is using his beastly roar to present the long view and the rationale of any given policy.”

Bigfoot came under fire Sunday from Democratic presidential candidates, including Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), who said on “Fox News Sunday” that the man-beast “exaggerated, clearly” about Iraq’s weapons programs. Kerry said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that Bigfoot and others in the administration “misled the American people” about the programs and the existence of the Yeti.

I suspect the band Minibosses provoke one of two reactions: “Huh?” and “That’s totally awesome.” Put me down for the second one. The band almost solely performs music from old Nintendo games. Electric guitars and drums give life to the poppy beats of Mega Man, the infectious theme of Zelda, and even unusual choices like a tune from Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out. Remember how pressing Select made Doc rub Little Mac’s shoulder faster and restored his life? And if you hit the old man in Zelda the fire would shoot an energy ball at you? And…

That’s why I like their music. A combination of spending much of my childhood playing video games and the emotions of these memories strong from the lack of exploitation of advertisers makes this a band for me.

You’ll have the best luck finding their tunes on a file-sharing service like Kazaa. Wired has an article on them in its February issue (not online yet).

Okay, my starts 8:30 in the morning when it’s 17 degrees outside. After running for a hour, and being off for 15 minutes, it refuses to start. Twelve hours later, when it’s back to 17 degrees, I march outside with a roll of aluminum foil and my fingers crossed. I try turning the car on before my scientific experiment, and it starts. I’m both relieved and disappointed. Metal, battery acid, and 99 cents Giant-brand aluminum foil may be a bad idea, but it would make a good story.

Louisiana’s Senate State Secretary Mike Bauer got caught sending pornographic jokes to his friends and other staffers from the office computer. He says he tried to delete the horrible material but accidentally forwarded the jokes. I love the sly dig in this quote:

“Hines said the Senate’s human resources office is heading the investigation and will look into whether one key stroke could have linked several e-mails of jokes into one message and forwarded it.”

If only he pressed Ctrl-D instead of Ctrl-A-F2-T-T-T-CC-S-Yes-Damnit.

My car, like a petulant child, refuses to start. Which is understandable. It’s a child that gets a bath once every six months, has a bump on its forehead (an accident!), and gets left in the cold except for the occasions it gets taken to the doctor’s office. My doctor is a mercenary who suspects me of abuse but will never tell the authorities because of the loss to his business. And my car has had enough.

Binary problems are much easier to deal with. If it works, great. If it doesn’t work, get it fixed. But my car refuses to start or fail to start consistently. Sometimes it will start. Sometimes the engine temperature will quiver when I insert the key into the ignition and then go dead as I turn the key.

In these instances, if jiggling the car wheel, jimmying the key, and opening and closing the door repeatedly had no effect, my decision whether to fix the car would be simple. But they work. Sometimes. Just enough that if you created a matrix that combined the frequency of car starts times one’s income level, a cascade of Yes and No’s would surround a small island of where I am at: “Just one more time.”

Take this morning. Car started fine. Drove to Falls Church. Reentered car. Ignition wouldn’t start. This was after a string of successful starts, leading me to believe that the problem, through the magic of ignoring it, had fixed itself.

Now, I know almost nothing about cars. But I know a lot about 8-bit Nintendo games. So I did what any good Nintendo player would do: I lifted the car hood and blew on the battery.

And it worked. The car started. Long live Zelda! “Doo doo, dee doo dee dee doo…”

The next two trips, I had to get a jump start. I blew corroded battery acid from the connectors until my spit sizzled on the engine. My child, nay, my baby, which I promise promise promise to take better care of if it gets healthy again, sits in front of my couch, doors unlocked, keys on the front seat, video camera on. I am wishing that a car thief will come by and I can take first prize in America’s Funniest Home Videos. “Now the thief is trying to blow on the battery! [audience laughs] Uh-oh. Here comes the cops. [sfx: slide whistle]“

I think the problem is that the one of the connectors is bent and not connecting with the battery. It resists my attempts to bend it back, and my sisters aren’t around to hold it to the battery while I turn on the car. So, unless someone tries to stop me, I’m going to do something that is either ingenious or incredibly stupid: shove tin foil in the gap between the connector and the batter.

Again, I know nothing about cars. If putting tin foil near a battery is the safety equivalent as having a lighter fluid fight with your friends at a barbecue, now would be an excellent time to tell me.

Inconsistent cookie, primary != me

I’m surprised a few people answered the poll already. Thank you.

Why I asked the question: until recently, I locked my bathroom door. It was out of a fear that…well, that’s why I stopped. I asked myself what I was afraid of and I couldn’t think of anything reasonable. Fear that a family member would walk in on me, fear that a roommate would, fear that a crazed killer would attack me while my fiber-deficient intestinal track tries to pass punctuation marks into a sea with no sentences.

I can’t pinpoint why I once locked the bathroom door, but something about leaving it unlocked threatened my sense of safety. And the habit got me thinking. What does it mean to lock one’s door?

Is it a decision that reflects the amount of fear in one’s life? If it isn’t, then why do some people do it, and some people don’t? Are people more worried about terrorism than other issues more likely to vote for Bush? If so, do they lock their bathroom doors?

The answers: yes, n/a, yes, and yes. Also, 3:2 odds that whether you lock your bathroom door or not, your family members share the same habit.

Everyone involved in this has a great story to tell their friends. Link from #!/usr/bin/grl

I’ve been meaning to write, or do something productive, for the past week. Meaning, of course, means nothing. That’s why, starting now, I will no longer “mean” to write anything. I will intend to write.

I’m intending to write more, but in the meantime, take a moment to answer this poll. “Do you lock the bathroom door at home? If so, why?” The reason I ask to come.

From a job ad on craigslist:

“I need 3-4 female models to help represent my company at the Baltimore, Dulles and Washington Home shows.

Ideally you have owned a home and participated in a home remodeling project with a story to tell. Or, you have acting skills and can think fast on your feet.”