March 03, 2004
Religious Graffiti
I saw this on an I-5 overpass support on Sunday. I guess someone got fired up by The Passion.
I like the way they spray paint on cardboard, and then duct tape that to the concrete. Very classy.
March 02, 2004
Air Beer
Apparently there's a law (or maybe just a "voluntary" restriction) on showing people actually drinking beer in a beer commercial. I wasn't aware of this until Ron Howard hosted SNL in the 80's and made a point of drinking chugging a beer during his monologue.
Flash forward 20 years.
There's a Miller ad that shows people with air beer, apparently to indicate that it has no taste.
Interestingly enough, they're never shown drinking the air beer. They're shown pouring it, spilling it, toasting it, doing everything but drinking it.
Bizarre.
I need glasses
Mayor faces charges for marrying gays
BY Andrew Metz and Sumathi ReddyMarch 2, 2004, 4:54 PM EST
Four days after presiding over a slew of same sex marriages in his quaint Hudson Valley village, the mayor of New Paltz today was charged with 19 violations of New York's domestic relations law, injecting the debate over gay marriages in the state with increasing drama and urgency.
Jason West, 26-year-old Green Party mayor, was ordered to appear in court Wednesday to answer charges that he broke state law by solomizing about two dozen weddings without a marriage license, according to New Paltz police and West's lawyer.
I read that as Sodomizing about two dozen weddings... Talk about stamina...
MORE...Techie Lameness
I just learned how to make my computer into it's own SMTP server. Now I don't have to change email settings whenever I'm on a new network. Oh Joy!
Took about 5 minutes to do. Requires Panther.
Oscar Thoughts
I finally realized why Charlize Theron creeped me out in the clips from Monster.
She looks like Gary Busey with long hair.
Touch Screen Voting
My voting experience was completely painless, except for the fact that I didn't have my voting booklet with me. Since I didn't have my booklet, it took them an extra 30 seconds to find my name on the list - compounded by the fact that my drivers license still has my old address on it.
I live in a neighborhood that is affluent and predominantly techie, except for the senior citizens who live in the retirement tower across the street - they're affluent, but not necessarily techie.
While they were looking up my name, one of the seniors finished voting and said "This does it. Absentee for me from now on."
About the voting itself:
Once they find your name, one of the poll workers programs and gives you a smart card that has a smart chip that is identical/very similar to the smart chip in the new military ID cards. She did not program the card until a different poll worker verified that I was registered. They gave me a card appropriate for my political party and told me to plug it into any machine. There were about a dozen of the machines at my site.
The machines are Diebolds. They weren't that exact model, but close. The card reader is in a different place and the plastics are black. The screen is about the same size as my 15" powerbook, but in the portrait orientation. The on-screen color scheme is reminiscent of WordPerfect for Windows (Blue screen with white text). It reminded me of a really big version of Citibank's ATM screens. The stand is about the same size/shape as the booths used with the paper ballots, but is significantly more sturdy.
I inserted the card in a slot in the upper right-hand corner and the screen unlocked and presented the choices. Like the old paper ballots, it started with President, then the minor offices, ending up with the California and county propositions. I think I had a total of six screens.
The text was large and easily readable - it's a san serif font and at least 20pt. There was also a "large text" button which I didn't try. Surprisingly, the checkboxes were on the left, as were the scrollbars. It made it easy for me as a leftie, but I can see a rightie reaching across, covering the screen with their hand and missing the button they really wanted. After you made a selection, a big X appeared next to the name and the other checkboxes disappeared. Mistakes were easy to rectify, just hit the X and the all the checkboxes reappear.
A summary page appears when you're done voting. Offices/votes that have been recorded successfully are listed in blue and show your choice, ones that you skipped are in bright red. To go back and vote, all you had to do was hit the red block and it would return you to that page. You aren't required to vote for everything (like schoolboard members), but it is an easy way to see if you missed something - significantly easier to double-check than the paper ballots were.
When you're happy with all your choices you hit the submit button and you get a thank you/vote has been recorded message and the card pops out.
Return the card to the poll worker, get your spiffy new "I voted touch screen" sticker, and you're done. Too bad the stickers don't get you a 10% discount at starbucks.
So Much for Viacom/CBS Cleaning up its Act
Letterman was interviewing Anne Heche and a presumably naked Richard Hatch walked out behind Dave's desk and almost gave her a coronary.
Fortunately he was blurred out.
On an unrelated noteI learned AH's husband is the cameraman she hired to do a documentary on Ellen's return to stand-up.
Irony.
February 29, 2004
Photo Smackdown
Yeah, Knoxville looks nice, but here is today's Pacific Beach sunset.
OK, it's after sunset, but that actually makes it cooler if you ask me. No photoshopping other than scaling. Click image for bigger version.
Oscars
Ouch... not a good start.
The intro movie sucked. Was it me or was the biggest laugh when Michael Moore got stomped?
Ugh, this is unbearable. Will TiVo is to skip through the crap.
- Liv Tyler - Gorgeous but claps like a spaz. Also, must be only person in Hollywood who hasn't gotten lasik.
- Thank God for Jack Black and Will Ferrell. Good to know that music has lyrics.
- Best line: We're thankful that LOTR wasn't eligible for this category -- Foreign language film winners.
- WTF is Uma wearing? And Diane Keaton? Yikes.
- Somebody ban Jack Nicholson from all public appearances. He's become such a cliche of himself that I can't stand it.
-- TiVo is a blessing and a curse. Blessing because you can speed through all the crap - the commercials, the boring speeches, the walks up to the stage, to watch the 15-20 minutes of watchable stuff - the reaction shots and the occasional interesting bit. It's a curse because it cuts off promptly at 9pm (pst) making me miss a few of the important awards. Oh well. I should've done what I did with important football games. Tape the game and the show after it. Live and Learn
Update: just saw the Sean Penn clip again. Was he reliving his spicolli character?
February 26, 2004
February 19, 2004
Get Your Facts Straight
I hate to be picky but...
The Assassination of Howard DeanIn the end, Dean threatened a troika of powerful institutions. He was a threat to the political parties (because he attacked Democrats' centrist drift), to media (because he criticized their cowardly reporting) and to big business (because he would roll back chummy tax-benefits for corporations). All three institutions responded with venom and destroyed Dean's candidacy. In 1968, a sniper's bullet ended Robert Kennedy's anti-establishment candidacy. In 2004, the methods used were more subtle, but just as effective.
Oswald killed JFK with a rifle.
Sirhan Sirhan killed RFK with a handgun from less than 10 feet away. Not exactly a sniper.
Socialized Medicine at Work
5 days between diagnosis and surgery, doesn't seem like a good deal to me.
Hundreds Of Coins Found In Man's Belly POSTED: 6:42 pm EST February 18, 2004BOSTON -- French doctors were taken aback when they discovered the reason for a patient's sore, swollen belly: He had swallowed around 350 coins - $650 worth - along with assorted necklaces and needles.
The 62-year-old man came to the emergency room of Cholet General Hospital in western France in 2002. He had a history of major psychiatric illness, was suffering from stomach pain, and could not eat or move his bowels.
His family warned doctors that he sometimes swallowed coins, and a few had been removed from his stomach in past hospital visits.
Still, doctors were awed when they took an X-ray. They discovered an enormous opaque mass in his stomach that turned out to weigh 12 pounds - as much as some bowling balls. It was so heavy it had forced his stomach down between his hips.
Five days after his arrival, doctors cut him open and removed his badly damaged stomach with its contents. He died 12 days later from complications.
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