Nice Racks

I saw these really cool bike racks in downtown, today. Get it? They're bike racks. I wish I had come up with that. I hate it when other people are more original than me.

Catch a Tiger by the Toe

-I know what really happened to Tiger Woods.

--A bunch of you people out there think that he got drunk--or stoned--and is trying to cover it up.

WRONG.

---Others think he got into an argument with his wife, the Swedish Barbie Doll, and was so pissed off, that he crashed the car.

WRONG.

Here's what happened:

1) FACT: Tiger Woods is half Thai. The sports world make a big deal out of the fact that he's African-American, and good at golf. They conveniently ignore his mom, who his dad met during the Vietnam War.

2) FACT: There are lots of Thai restaurants in the U.S.

----CONCLUSION: Tiger wasn't drunk, and he didn't have an argument with his wife. He was delivering Thai take-out.

-----THINK ABOUT IT: Yeah, he's rich, but where does all that money come from? Golf? Come on. Golf pays okay, but Tiger's a smart guy. He did what the other smart sports guys do. They know that the career will last only so long, so they invest their money into restaurants, car dealerships, and laundromats. The Mercedes? The TAG-Heuer watch? The Germans and the Swiss give him those things for free, so that they can get some product placement. Next time you watch NCIS, note that all of the men wear Omega dive watches, and everybody drinks Maker's Mark. Last year they all drank Wild Turkey.

Hm...

------THE ANSWER: Tiger got a frantic call from one of the Thai restaurants that he owns. The driver, Hihetetlenulhosszuthaifoldinevemvan, called in sick, and nobody was available to deliver Shaq's order of Pad-See-Yew (Shaquille O'Neil lives in Tiger's gated community). Sleepy, Tiger backed into the fire hydrant, knocking over the food, causing that flimsy little plastic lid to pop off the Rooster Hot Sauce, instantly filling the Escalade with noxious fumes, rendering him unconscious. This explains his incoherent state when the cops arrived.

-------MYSTERY SOLVED

===========================

Photo credit: Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP

Obama's "Dreams for My Father" attacked by hateful nutjobs

^I just finished Reading Barack Obama's "Dreams for My Father". I will write my own review of it, later. My take on the book will be from a unique perspective--that of a reader who discovers that he has a lot of history in common with the President.
^^I posted the following at AmericanThinker, Jack Cashill's right-wing blog. Let's see if he allows it to appear on his website:

Well.
-As a writer, I certainly enjoy reading Mr Cashill's pseudoscientific musings and speculations. He almost gets away with it, until he shoots himself in the foot with the following statement: "But I did notice something else. The book was much too well written. I had seen enough of Obama's interviews to know that he did not speak with anywhere near the verbal sophistication on display in Dreams."
-- A patently ridiculous statement, if I ever heard one. Mr. Obama is articulate and highly intelligent, with a clear vision. It is precisely these attributes after 8 years of the Madness of King George that energizes unfortunate souls like Mr. Cashill to sail off in search of El Dorado, unaware that there is only pyrite waiting for them on the distant shore. We are asked to believe that somebody was able to graduate from Harvard Law, pass a state bar exam, become president of the law review, and yet he is actually an unsophisticated, incoherent speaker? This, interspersed with complaints that he's not really an oppressed minority, because he grew up among financially secure white folks? Well, which is he: an inarticulate ghetto dude, or the scion of privelage? You can't have it both ways, Mr. Cashill. I don't believe in conspiracy theories--be they of the leftist or right wing variety. Trying to organize a large number of people to carry out some misdeed without some of them spilling the beans is like trying to herd cats (how's that for a mixed metaphor?).
---Having Ayers ghost write Obama's book(s) requires collusion from a good number of people. All of these grand machinations had to be accomplished to publish a book about a guy who is president of the Harvard Law Review? Given the choice between believing in such a conspiracy of this required level complexity, or believing that maybe the guy is really smart, the less complex answer is far more plausible.
----A few comments on the "discovery" of all of the (allegedly) suspicous parallels between Ayers' book and Obama's: It it is plausible (and acceptable) that Obama may have gotten input & advice from Ayers (or anybody else) while writing the book. This is normal practice. Usually, the writer gives credit to all of those who contributed, proof-read, critqued, etc. I just returned "Dreams" to the library, so I can't check.
-----The real point of Mr. Cashill's multiple essays on this topic is that he wants to prove that Obama is some sort of a dangerous commie lunatic imbecile whose strings are being pulled by people who hate America. Please.
------As far as parallels and in-depth analysis, I giggled with glee recently while watching a 'documentary' on the History Channel (or maybe it was the Discovery Channel: either way, it was one of those cable TV channels that used to be good 20 years ago) about The Bible Code. An orthodox rabbi nodded solemnly while explaining all of the hidden mathematical codes that predicted events in our times. When confronted with the results of a mathematics professor's work in which using the rabbi's methodology he found references to Tom Sawyer, the rabbi rolled his eyes, and explained it away with wishful thinking.
-------I guess that Mark Twain was right about Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.

H1N1 Baloney, or Really, It's Okay for Kids to Die

This person's blog answers the conspracy theories and misinformation about H1N1 swine flu vaccination shots and the swine flu epidemic so well that I'm just going to provide a link to it.

People who think this is a conspiracy between governments and Big Pharma are welcome to sputter such drivel to the parents of Joey Holt, who bore an uncanny resembance to my boy (seen here, with his sister on a camping trip this summer).

Now Do You Believe Me?

-Well, if you ever doubted that right-wing, religious nutjobs hate Obama, here it is: T-shirts and bumper stickers that refer to Psalm 109:8.

--The premise here, boys and girls, is that only true christians have the bible memorized, so they will be able to quote the verse, and catch the meaning i.e. the true intent of the wearer of said offending t-shirt, that suggests making a widow out of Michelle, and orphans out of Sasha and Malia. Apparently, a lot of others agree with me, as you can see on the t-shirt company's blog.

---I have a friend who is christian, who would be deeply offended by these t-shirts. The first thing he would do is point out that the anti-Obama quote is from the Old Testament, when the whole idea of christianity is that Jesus brought a new gospel. In case you're wondering, he is a well-to-do whiteboy who lives in a big house in a nice neighborhood. Thanks for asking.
----Has anybody complained about this to the Secret Service? This doesn't look like protected free speech to me; it looks like a clear threat against the President of the United States.

----If you see someone wearing a t-shirt like that, exercise your own free speech, and cuss him out. Before you do, yank the white hood off his head, so that you can look'em in his beady little in-bred eyes.

Another Day at the Office

Some people installed a special x-ray machine in their department, and asked me to measure the x-ray scatter off the patient while the tech is shooting the x-rays. In plain English, they want to know if the employee is getting nailed by x-rays. The only way to do it was to have a "patient" getting their skull x-rayed. Now I know what improvements they have to make to the room's shielding.

Why Do You Hate America?

My favorite republican slogan--the anti-intellectual sledgehammer used to stifle lack of agreement with their closed-minded little ideas--is "Why do you hate America?" When the French refused to help us invade Iraq, we resorted to the World War I era tactic of renaming our food. Instead of insulting the rat-bastard Germans by re-naming sauerkraut "liberty cabbage"...oh, wait...the Germans are helping us in Afghanistan: cancel the insults...we re-named French fries "freedom fries". My friend X the Vicious Republican (hiding his name by calling him "X" is tons of fun: it puts him into the same category as Malcolm X--someone he wouldn't be caught dead with) who is still pissed at the French for not helping us invade Iraq (needless to say, he still won't admit that we had no basis for invading, in the first place) loves to use buzzwords like "European" and "socialism" and--shudder--"European socialism". The venom with which he pronounces either word sounds like if Europeans and/or socialists are known child molesters. Ooh...a chill just went up and down my spine. Did someone turn up the air-conditioning?
Forbes Magazine--of all people--has an interesting essay by Bruce Bartlett titled "The Europeanization of America". It's so well-written, that I'll just suggest you click on the link, and read it, yourself .