dialing for death

use your mobile when driving? no matter whether its handheld or not, your chances of an accident are 400% higher.

we repeat: 400% higher. so sayeth the national safety council. they advocate a complete ban on cell phone use while driving.

so what does ctia (the wireless association) have to say about all this?

"we think that you can sensibly and safely use a cellphone to make a brief call." so sayeth john walls, vp of ctia.

is our food supply safe?

here's a dirty secret that the food industry doesn't want you to know: food producers in most states are not required to alert health regulators if internal tests show possible contamination at their plants.

holy crap, batman - no wonder toxic stuff keeps winding up in our groceries!

untested medical devices: is your mom at risk?

despite the fact that congress ordered the fda to clean up this mess, the fda approved 228 medical devices without a single full-scale review between 2003 - 2007.

why? who was presi... oh. yeah. duh.

of course, they're probably low-risk items like bandages and tongue depre... what's that? they include metal hip joints, external defibrillators, and electrodes for pacemakers?

oh.

so the real issue seems to be which companies made these items, and who in the bush regime they paid to ignore congress's mandate. anyone got the skinny on either or both?

is your isp screwing your pooch?

do you suspect that your isp is choking your bandwidth chicken, strangling your bitstreams, throttling your gmail and otherwise cheating you out of the bandwidth you paid for? you're not alone. the issue is, how prove it?

and then came google.

using several scattered servers, google now provides free access to online tools that can help you determine if your isp is taking a byte (lame, we know) out of your bandwidth. caveat emptor!

(come bask in the googley goodness with us. you know you want to.)

angie vs. jen

in the war between a. jolie & j. aniston, each has their weapons. angie uses words. how... quaint.
jen, on the other hand, uses her natural hotness & complete lack of alien dna to remind msr. pitt of exactly what he's missing.
which, as it turns out, is quite a lot.

rip: patrick mcgoohan

when i was small, my dad used to let me stay up past my bedtime on friday nights to watch the prisoner on our local pbs station. this was during a time when my dad was teaching me about politics - in the midst of watergate, no less - and sowed the seed of a deep distrust of government - any government - that has stayed with me ever since.
if you've never seen the series, your local library may have it. if not, pick up the set from amazon and share it with everyone you know. why do you think people are still talking about it, 40 years later? because it's still that important. gitmo, iraq, dubya listening in on your phone conversations, rove maybe bumping people off - it's all there.

but what is the greatest evil? if you are going to epitomize evil, what is it? is it the bomb? the greatest evil that one has to fight constantly, every minute of the day until one dies, is the worse part of oneself.

patrick mcgoohan (1928 - 2009)

rip: tom farquhar

tom farquhar was a childhood friend and hero of mine. he was also one of the sweetest people i've ever met. no surprise, though - his whole family was kind and inclusive in a way that seems to have died out everywhere else.

tom was killed at work on friday when a lathe that he and a co-worker were moving fell on him.

his death doesn't seem real. the world is a great deal darker at his loss. tom walked me to school on my first day, and protected me from bullies until i was big enough to take care of myself. his house was where all of the neighborhood kids played. was there a house like that in your neighborhood? when our tv blew up, the farquhars let my brothers & i watch tv at their house until my folks could afford another.

tom showed me my first girlie magazine, taught me how to fight, and to always, always be kind. he was the builder of forts, the car tinkerer, and he had a smile that lit up the room.

goodbye, tom. i will miss you. we all will.

no hooking

what we like about this sign is its helpful illustration, in case anyone was unclear on the meaning of the term 'hooking'. and no, those aren't socks under the van.

musings on democrat & republican presidents

in our lifetime, we've seen several presidents. want to know what we remember about each?

dubya (r): the war, of course. and the fact that he appointed 99 people to regulate industries that they used to be lobbyists for. wonder how the economy crashed? consider this a big clue.

clinton (d): brought back domestic spying, which we thought we shed back in the 70's. extremely intelligent but - like kennedy - he couldn't keep it zipped.

bush (r): read his lips - no new taxes. the wimpiest pitch in history, and a wife that looked more like his mother (and acted like it, too).

reagan (r): iran contra. no amrs for hostages (while we were looking, anyway). the most indictments of presidential appointees in history. greed is good. what you feel trickling down is the wealthiest 3% pissing on you.

carter (d): a good man, but a terrible president. killer bunny. a lusting heart.

ford (r): a tripping, flavorless cypher with a good golf game. lost any hope of (re?)election by pardoning tricky dick.

nixon (r): how can you tell when nixon is lying? his lips are moving. but tricky dick established relations with china. (the fact that they now own a sizable chunk of this country is not his fault, however - its ours.)

johnson (d): a yes man from the word go. the question is, what did he really say yes to?

kennedy (d): a great president for everyone but the rich, the military, and the mafia. and a player of the first rank.

monster truckers

a 6-year-old boy was killed at a monster truck rally in washington today. bad enough. more than bad enough.

unforgivable: they kept the show going, and have another planned for tomorrow.

there are times when we're ashamed to be human. folks, this is one of those times.

how could they? how dare they.

gillian anderson

gillian anderson is acerbic, intelligent, funny, beautiful, and tied forever in our minds to a single character.

that's the worst part of being a successful tv star: because you're successful, all of your potential gets squished into a pigeonhole. then you get dumped.

gillian, there's only one way out: marry us.

quit yer bitchin' #35

no matter how bad your day might be, at least you're not this bird. he certainly looks surprised, doesn't he? probably not as surprised as the australian woman who found this golden orb weaver spider in her garden, though.

at least the spider looks happy. doesn't he?

the best job in the world?

ok, losers, listen up: queensland (australia) is losing millions in tourist dollars due to the tanking world economy. to fight back, they want to hire a charismatic communicator (think the dirty jobs guy) to tell the world why queensland is the best place in the world to vacation.

the job pays us$105k for 6 months, beginning in july. you will be given a tropical island with a multi-million dollar house to live in during your employment, and encouraged to lay around on the beach, go snorkeling, sailing, and other beachy activities.

got to islandreefjob.com to apply. remember to watch out for great white sharks.

good clean fun

in the middle of the economy from hell, an inescapable bloodsucking war, and an uncertain future, a bit of innocence. for your enjoyment (and possible participation): improveverywhere.com.

terry pratchett

pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. free men pull in all kinds of directions.

terry pratchett (1948 - ?)

for the record, we think that terry is the brightest and most charming human since einstein. he was recently diagnosed with early-onset alzheimer's, which is a shame. his most recent book, nation - and literally (sigh) dozens more - can be found on amazon.

why you never see the guys in our high school class on eharmony

for some odd reason, they all answered this question the exact same way. which explains why the guys in the band - who had a different answer - were so darned popular.

how to avoid child support: kill the kid

sadly, this is by no means the first time that elsewhen has reported on exactly this unthinkable act: fathers killing their children in order to aither a) avoid child support payments or b) to get back at the children's mother. frankly, we're sick of it. sick of the fact that people like this even exist, and that we happen to share our species with them.

to our mind (and we only have one), there is no greater crime than harming a child, period. to prevent this from happening again, we think that an illustrative example needs to be made. so we have a proposition for you:

the next father that kills his child is burned at the stake. no, we're not kidding. no, we're not just saying it to make some point about the monkey-mindedness of some people. we want the bonfire broadcast on live tv across every channel. we can get the tobacco companies to fund it, or maybe the beer companies. make it mandatory viewing at every high school, public & private, and as part of the immigration process.

let the message be loud and clear: hurt a kid, and we'll fry your ass in hell, whether it exists or not.

quit yer bitchin' #33

if the economy keeps moving in this direction, it's only a matter of time. (which is why we've stocked up on mucky duck.)

why not ban cigarettes?

a recent study in colorado found that banning smoking led to a major decrease in heart attacks - 41% over 3 years. given results like these and the knowledge that smoking causes lung cancer for the smoker and others who happen to be around smokers, plus tens of billions of dollars in other health issues that we pay for out of our taxes every year, why not just ban them entirely?

two reasons: political contributions and taxes. and that's not counting the billions of dollars of smokes sold on the black market.