Well, I see that McDonald's now has a "Summersize Me" 42oz drink. I love it. After the Supersize Me "documentary" came out, they were supposed to have dropped all their supersize offerings. That didn't last long. How soon the public forgets.
Well I woke up this morning around 4:00am with what I believe to be a sinus infection...and a headache to go along with it. Unable to sleep, I came into work early (I'll probably have to leave early to see a doctor).
It's definitely Monday. On my way to work, I stopped at the drive thru and got breakfast. The first bite I took squirted cheesy water or something out on my shirt! When it dried, you could still see it. Dammit!
I just heard that James Doohan of Star Trek fame has passed away. He played one of my favorite Star Trek characters (Scotty), and from what I hear, he was a decent person in real life, unlike William Shatner who sounds like an ego maniac and maybe even an Eggo maniac, too.
Well, I arrived at the office this morning to find that my cube was flooded overnight by a leaking hot water pipe. Of course, the pipe was sorta above my desk, and everything on my desk and my neighbor's desk was soaking wet. We're talking Hurricane Emily wet.
When I turned my keyboard over, a cup of water poured out. The same story with my monitor and laptop. There was also a scorched place on the wall where an electrical fire almost started. we were lucky the building didn't burn down.
I'm just glad I wasn't sitting there when the hot water started to spew.
Being a supporter of the Nature Conservancy, I just couldn't let this one go. Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson has filed a lawsuit against several Arkansas poultry companies, claiming they are polluting the Illinois River with phosphorous runoff from chicken litter. Not only is the runoff toxic to the environment, it also has a negative economic impact on Oklahoma businesses. Can we say float trip?
Now the funny thing is, the poultry farmers are claiming they will be run out of business if the lawsuit proceeds. This is probably the argument from polluters that pisses me off more than anything. It's like saying, "Sorry if we are making you sick, but we have money to make!" Would the argument be the same if we were talking about nuclear waste runoff?
I just wonder where the money will go if Oklahoma manages to win the lawsuit. Will it go toward cleanup efforts or what?
James Cave of Tecumseh. While he was in his garage, he felt a pain in his foot. When he reached down to rub it, he was struck in the hand by a pygmy rattlesnake (thus explaining the pain in his foot). But wait, it gets worse. After all this, he fell backwards...on top of a copperhead snake that bit him on the foot (not sure if it was the same one or not) and then in the groin. Ouch! As of Friday, he remains in critical condition at an Oklahoma City hospital.
Here is a picture I took tonight at the fireworks show at the Riverwalk Crossing, celebrating the 100th birthday of Jenks.
State Representative Fred Morgan wants to ban the sale of violent video games to minors, stating that parents are not aware of what is in the video games they are playing. The ACLU says parents should decide what their children can watch, not the government. The ACLU's argument sounds good in theory. But in reality, most parents just don't pay attention to what their children are renting. When I worked at Blockbuster, Blockbuster had a policy of not renting M rated games to kids unless the parents said it was okay. It was my experience that after we called the parents two or three times at work during the day, the parents usually just had a note put on the account to let their children rent whatever.
You'd think being the spiritual leader of the Christian world would be a full time job. Apparently not. It must have been a slow day at the Holy See today, because Pope Benedict had time to publicly disapprove of Harry Potter. I'm not even sure the Pope knows that Harry Potter is a fictional character. The Pope says Harry Potter can somehow "distort Christianity in the soul". Huh? It's just a book.
In fact, I'm beginning to wonder if the Vatican has something against fiction in general. Earlier this year, the Vatican condemned The DaVinci Code. I'm surprised it took them so long, but--again--it's just a work of fiction.
With all of the terrorist crap going on in the world, maybe the Pope should spend more time paying attention to things that are real.
State Senator Frank Shurden is trying to get a bill passed that would give the State of Oklahoma permission to surgically castrate someone convicted of rape. Castration would only be an option where the is supporting DNA evidence and the the rape involves children or significant injury. Similar legislation has been attempted at least two times before and was not successfully passed. I was surprised to find out that a few other states have successfully passed compulsary castration laws.
The Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. That aside, this website cites a Danish study that showed repeat offenders were mostly non-existant after being castrated.
I'm not sure how I feel about this one. Being a man, the thought of castration is a daily fear. However, if it works, it's hard to argue against it.
There is a God! Bernard Ebbers has been sentenced to 25 years! I blame him and the 9/11 terrorists for wiping out my WorldCom 401k.
Sounds like Worlds of Fun in Kansas City is building a new inverted coaster called the Patriot for the '06 season. I know where I'm headed next summer!
P.S.: I recently rode Powder Keg at Silver Dollar City, and it was another brilliant addition to the park. While the restraint system is a little odd/uncomfortable, the ride itself is very thrilling, if a little short. The ride is being billed as a family launched coaster. Having heard that, I didn't expect the launch to be all that impressive, certainly no where near the intensity of Mr. Freeze at Six Flags Over Texas or Six Flags Over St. Louis. Boy was I wrong. The launch doesn't last as long as Mr. Freeze but it's every bit as intense...maybe more. Sadly, I only got to ride it once.
I found this humorous. The National Institute on Media and the Family has decided that a recent patch to the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas game that unlocks sexually explicit minigames has pushed the game "over the edge."
Now, the funny thing is, before the patch was added, you could kill innocent bystanders and cops, graphically stomp the head of prostitutes into a bloody mess, launch rockets at police helicopters, etc, in the game. It took the addition of a sexual situation to make the Institute really throw a fit. Go figure.
Snopes.com has an interesting idea about keeping an address book entry in your cell phone with the name "ICE", which stands for In Case of Emergency. Basically, the idea is that emergency workers would see this entry and call it first to notify a friend or family member something has happened to you. I don't know if it will catch on or not, but it's probably still a good idea.
Of course, I would think Home, Mom, and/or Dad in your address book would probably work just as well, too.
The Lober Messiah recently posted an article about the self-checkout line at Wal-Mart that is dead-on. Here are the rules I think should be listed above the self-checkout area:
- If you are buying produce, go to a real person. Produce doesn't have a bar code (unless it's been genetically engineered to have a bar code and in that case it's Frankenfood anyway and you don't want it).
- If you are not paying with plastic, go to a real person. All other forms of payment are too complicated.
- If you are buying alcohol or cigarettes, go to a real person. Sorry teenagers!
- If you have more than 10 items, go to a real person. They've been scanning barcodes much longer than you and they're better at it.
- If you are not tech savvy, go to a real person.
- If you've ever worn fishing lure ear rings, please read the previous bullet and go to a real person!
- If you are retired, go to a real person.
- If you can't read, GO TO A REAL PERSON!
Mix 96 reported this morning that 211 phone service is supposed to go live in the Tulsa area some time today. Supposedly, it gives out information and is supposed to alleviate some of the traffic from the 911 call center. Other than that, I don't know what it's for. Maybe I'll prank call them later today: If they were to carpet the entire state of Florida, how much would that cost?
Well, after ordering it nearly 2 weeks ago from overseas, the GBA Movie Player finally came in the mail. I was so excited. I had already downloaded the player from the internet and converted a couple of movies so I'd be ready when it got here. For those of you not in the know, the GBA Movie Player will let you play video on your Game Boy Advance (or Nintendo DS). With the conversion software, you can even convert DVDs.
So I put the movies on the Game Boy, turned it on with growing anticipation, and hit play. The movie sounded like shit.
The coversion software is configurable, but nothing seemed to help. I had to resort to using third-party software to modify the audio prior to sending it through the converter to get decent audio out of thing. It only took me all day to figure that out, and I thought about slamming my head into the wall several times.
Here is yet another example of our dumbass court system: click here
How can the court, with an honest face, say a naked woman is contributing to the delinquency of minor when said minor is 16 years old? Name one 16 year old who hasn't seen a naked woman already? Hello? We have this thing called the Internet now. Gimmee a break.
What is this country's hang up with nudity, anyway? Violence is much more a threat to our sanity/safety than naked strippers, and yet our movies are full of carnage. You can show a 100 people being brutally gunned down in a movie and get an PG-13 rating. Add in some nudity, even in a non-sexual situation, and you either get an R or NC-17 rating. I just don't get it.
I'm sure some of you will disagree!
Update: A friend of mine has pointed out that the questions in this survey are probably not the best at determining how nerdy a person is. For instance, there are no questions about Star Wars, Star Trek, Monty Python, Douglas Adams, PDAs, or blogs. I'm sure my nerd level would have spiked if there had been questions like: What color socks did Mr. Spock wear in episode 22 of Star Trek? (This is a trick question--he doesn't wear socks in that episode...I thought everyone knew that!)
NewsChannel 8 is reporting the Tulsa Parks Board has reversed its decision to include a Creationism display at the Tulsa Zoo.
You may remember that Dan Hicks went to the zoo recently, and he was so insecure about his own religion beliefs that he found a Ganesha statue threatening to him. Now I've been to the zoo several times. I've never thought the Ganesha statue was particularly menacing...it's just a hunk of marble. I guess it might be threatening if it fell over on top of you!
What the NewsChannel 8 report didn't tell you (ahem) is why the Parks Board changed its mind. After giving some thought to Dan Hicks request for equal representation of his religion, the board felt adding a Creationism display did not meet the criteria of equal representation. Instead, they did an intensive study of the Ganesha statue. Here is what they found:
Sadly, the war on terror continues this morning and London has a black eye. London was hit by at least 4 bombs. An al-Qaida group is claiming responsibility.
BBC News reported this quote from President Bush: "the war on terror goes on". I'm hoping he had more to say than that because, by itself, that quote just sounds like a thinly-veiled attempt to justify his own war-time agenda (which seems largely ineffective at the moment). He wasn't even being attacked by the press this time, but he sounded like he was on the defensive. Hmn.
What do these al-Qaida terrorists hope to prove by randomly blowing up a bunch of innocent people? It just doesn't make any logical sense. It does show they have absolutely zero respect for life. I believe we should treat them with the same level of respect when we catch them.
I've been reading about 8 year-old Shasta Groene's terrifying ordeal, and it just makes me sick and angry. She's now saying she was kidnapped by Joseph Duncan and abused by him several times. She also saw him abuse her 9 year-old brother, who is now presumed dead. What's even more disgusting is that Duncan is a convicted sex offender who was previously released from prison. Sociopaths that repeatedly pray on children should never be allowed to rejoin society. They have no conscience, and there's growing evidence they cannot be reformed, so why do we continue to let them out of jail?
On the other hand, I want to talk about sex offender registries. Do they really make you feel safer? Just because you know a sex offender lives down the street, doesn't mean you can know where that sex offender is all the time. I think they are ineffective, they instill an unhealthy sense of paranoia, and they are a waste of tax payers' money. I might feel differently if I had childen, I don't know.
Despite the fact that some drunk bastard kept setting off projectile fireworks over my head, I had a great time at the Tulsa Celebrates Freedom fireworks display last night...until some other drunk bastard started screaming "Happy Birthday America!" right behind me over and over. Well, it was slurred and sounded more like "Hoppy Birthday Amerka!".
To make matters worse, a third drunk bastard started making fun of the second drunk bastard and started shouting the same phrase in his best demonic-sounding voice.
Ah, what fun it was to be among Tulsa's, uneducated masses.
Here's another cool website that keeps track of the countries you've visited.
create your own visited country map
or check our Venice travel guide
Here is a cool website that keeps track of all the states you've visited. I'm from Oklahoma, but I've been to all the states marked in the picture below. I wish they hadn't used the color red...it gave me horrible flashbacks from the last election!
create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.
