Year: 2010

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The Friday Roundup

– UNC is considering installing rails on the 8,500 bunk beds on campus after a woman rolled off one and died recently. No word on whether the “university” is considering requiring binkies, naptime and Baby Einstein videos as well.

– Remember Steven Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant who went nuts and left down the emergency slide not too long ago? Well, it seems that two different government agencies have interviewed everyone who was on that plane, and no one – not a single passenger or crew member – backs up Slater’s version of the story.

– One of the huge downsides to the smoking ban in restaurants here in North Carolina is there’s no longer that informal barrier between smokers (without kids) and families (with kids). So now you go out to eat and someone’s demonspawn runs around yelling and screaming, making dining out a far less pleasurable experience than it once was. However, a restaurant in Carolina Beach is fighting back, banning screaming children from the premises. Can I get an AMEN?

– When you were a kid, did you ever sort through a box of Lucky Charms to get a bowl full of mostly marshmallows? Well, sort no longer, my friends: a company is now selling bags full of just the marshmallow bits. Prices start at $7 for two 7 ounce bags of the glorious stuff and go all the way up to $400 for a 95lb bag. Man, if I ever win the lottery, I’m so buying a 95lb bag of cereal marshmallows!

– For some time now, I’ve been for abolishing the penny and nickel. It’s just simple math, folks: it costs the US Mint 1.7¢ to make each 1¢ coin, and it costs the mint 9¢ to make each 5¢ coin. And not only that, pennies and nickels are basically worthless. I challenge anyone to go to a store and find anything for 1¢ and anything for 5¢ that isn’t “penny” candy! But don’t just take my word for it, watch this video from a guy who understands economics… and talks really fast:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77C47XYm_3c&feature=player_embedded

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Golf Ball vs. Steel

Here’s a cool video of a golf ball being shot at a steel plate at 150mph. The video, shot at 70,000 frames per second, shows the ball being squashed flat, then morphing back into shape:

Neat, huh?

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Mad Men: “The Suitcase”

This episode begins with Harry handing out tickets to a screening of the rematch between Cassius Clay and Sonny Liston. He gives the tickets to Pete and Ken, but makes the newer SCDP employees pay for theirs. Harry laughs at Danny and calls him a Jew, to which Danny asks if Harry’s Hollywood friends know that he talks like that. The gang then argue over who’s going to win the fight. Don walks in, gets his ticket, and puts $100 on Liston. Harry invites him to dinner and drinks at The Palm before the match. Don says he will be there, then orders people working on Samsonite to follow him.

After Don walks in his office and asks Ms. Blankenship to get him and Roger dinner reservations at any restaurant except the Palm, Peggy, Stan, Joey and Danny walk in to give their pitch for the luggage company: a commercial with Joe Namath. Don calls celebrity endorsements “lazy” and says that he doesn’t care for their execution of the ad. When Peggy insists that Dr. Miller says that women buy suitcases, Don asks everyone else to leave the room. Once alone, Don tears into Peggy, who stands there and takes it, and then leaves.

mad_men_s04_e07_01

In her office, she finds flowers and a “gift” from Duck: business cards for “Philips-Olson Advertising” in which she is listed as “Creative Director”. She calls to thank him, and he begs her to join him at his female-centered agency. Happy at first, Peggy soon figures out that Duck is drinking… and has been fired from Grey. She tries to console him, but Duck says that he’s falling apart.

Continue reading “Mad Men: “The Suitcase””

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Big Brother moving to North Carolina?

I wanted to write a long, beautiful treatise against this, but I just can’t. I read the article and was just too shocked, stunned and gobsmacked to write a single word about it. So I’ll just let the article speak for itself:

If you are taking a painkiller, law enforcement wants to know about it.

The N.C. Sheriff’s Association met with a legislative study committee Tuesday to discuss ways sheriffs can access pharmacy records of people taking high-powered painkillers like Percocet, Vicodin, Xanax and OxyContin.

Eddie Caldwell, a lobbyist for the N.C. Sheriff’s Association, said they want to set up a system to stop overdoses.

No legislation has been drafted but the association and the oversight committee plan to present a package to the General Assembly in 2011 that will outline what kind of power they want. It will stipulate how deep into the public’s medicine cabinets they will reach and what law enforcement officers will do with the information.

Between this, warrentless searches of electronic devices and Obamacare, I’m really starting to wonder what fucking country I live in these days. It’s all the more shocking because this comes out just days after Fidel Castro admitted that the “Cuban model” isn’t working any more. So, just as one of the worst dictatorships in the Western hemisphere shows signs of loosening up… the Land of the (Formerly) Free shows signs of cozying up to Ingsoc.

Big Brother

If you check out the Gaston Gazette link below, be sure to check out the comments. “I think it’s time for a lawsuit”, some say. I say it’s time for a Second American Revolution! That, or are the islands ready yet?

via the Gaston Gazette.

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Peggy and Pete

From “Meditations in an Emergency”:

“One day you’re there, and then all of the sudden, there’s less of you… and you wonder where that part went… if it’s living somewhere outside of you… and you keep thinking maybe you’ll get it back… and then you realize… it’s just gone.”

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-09-05

  • "Obama says economy not growing fast enough" Really, Einstein? #
  • Congrats Aaron Paul! #
  • You were robbed, Christina! #
  • Cranston wins again. I like the guy, but wish Hamm would win just once! #
  • Is it wrong that I got turned on by Jewel during the "In Memoriam" bit? #
  • Wow… I've never seen Claire Danes look so good! #
  • "The Pacific"? Two hours later and something I like wins! #
  • HEEEEEEEEELLLLLL YEEEAHHHH!! THREE IN A ROW, BABY! Congrats, Matt Wiener and the rest of the "Mad Men" crew! #
  • Wow… MF wins for Best Comedy? Cool! #
  • "She's pure as New York snow…" #
  • "The higher the heel, the more traumatic her childhood." #
  • @terrinh73 Or how about "We're the party of liberal guilt and spending other people's money?" Seems more accurate to me… #

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The Most Beautiful Woman

“This bland and blurry woman is the computer-generated composite of Angelina Jolie, Anne Hathaway, Charlize Theron, Elisha Cuthbert, Hilary Duff, Jennifer Love Hewitt. Jessica Alba, Jennifer Biel, Kiera Knightly, Kate Bosworth, Kristin Kreuk, Mandy Moore, Megan Fox, Monica Belluci, Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson.”

via Behold, the most beautiful woman ever created.

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The Road Trip List

A little while back, I was surfing my favorite Internet message board when I found an interesting thread. The author proposed a thought experiment: imagine that it’s the late 80s or early 90s. You have a car with a tape deck, and you’re going on a road trip. Which 15 tapes would you bring with you?

He only proposed two big rules: the album had to be released in cassette format, and the cut off date was the year 2000. Aside from that, anything was fair game.

I made my own list, which you can see below. But keep a few of my “rules” in mind:

1) I got my first CD player for Christmas in 1985, and stopped buying pre-recorded cassettes shortly thereafter. So, in my mind, the “Age of Cassettes” is 1980 – 1986.

2) I was the “King of Mix Tapes” in my day. I bought a lot of cassettes in the 80s, but I mostly bought LPs or CDs and dumped them to blank tapes, and later took the best songs and mixed them in with tracks from other albums. So, when I think of cassettes, I tend to not think of “albums”.

Continue reading “The Road Trip List”

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The Irony of Cassius Clay

“As many know, there once was a great boxer named Cassius Clay. He converted to Islam in 1964, seemingly bothered that Jesus was portrayed as “a white with blond hair and blue eyes,” as he put it, and took the name “Muhammad Ali.” Of course, the irony of this is that despite being intensely aware of his slave roots, Ali rejected the name of an abolitionist (Clay) and took the name of a slave-owner (Muhammad). It also perhaps eluded him that Christians were the first ones to outlaw slavery, while Muslims give black Africans rope and chains to this day.”

via Lost Civilization.