I’m enjoying my hiatus today. How ’bout you?

I’ve been holding this video for over a week now. I don’t think that Eric realizes that he is responsible for me finding this gem, but this is a lecture we all need to hear if not once a day, once a week. If we don’t act soon, our rights are going to be violated and we will be at the mercy of some nameless, cold-hearted corporation suing us for copyright infringement when we should be suing for non-full plain English disclosure and insane licensing agreements.

The irony of it all is that I have a very special post about music for tomorrow morning before I take off for the holiday.

Enjoy!

Question:
If Represenative Strangle gets his draft, should we include females in the draft since the Armed Services have been intergrated?

Just remember that it could be worse. Consider the following:

The average cost of rehabilitating a seal after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska was $80,000. At a special ceremony, two of the most expensively saved animals were released into the wild amid cheers and onlookers. A moment later, in full view, a killer whale ate them both.

A psychology student in New York rented out her spare room to a carpenter in order to nag him constantly and study his reactions. After weeks of needling, he snapped and beat her with an ax leaving her mentally retarded.

A woman came home to find her husband in the kitchen, shaking frantically with what looked like a wire running from his waist towards the electric kettle. Intending to jolt him away from the deadly current, she whacked him with a handy plank of wood by the back door, breaking his arm in two places. Until that moment, he had been happily listening to his Walkman.

Two animal rights protesters were protesting at the cruelty of sending pigs to a slaughterhouse in Bonn Germany. Suddenly the pigs, all two thousand of them, escaped through a broken fence and stampeded, and trampled the two helpless protesters to death.

And finally…

Iraqi terrorist, Khay Rahnajet, didn’t pay enough postage on a letter bomb. It came back with “return to sender” stamped on it. Forgetting it was the bomb, he opened it and was blown to bits.

Your day’s not so bad, is it?

This has been a good week, but alas, it is coming to an end.

I once had a professor here at UAH who, on the first day of class would always tell the same story. While going over his syllabus, he would get to the late policy and say “I have a simple late policy. It ain’t. It’s not fair to you and it’s not fair to me. I have to teach six classes plus work on my doctorate and it’s not fair to you that someone gets to turn something in late and still get credit for it.”

Then he would proceed with one of my favorite stories by saying, “There’s an exception to every rule.” The story goes that one bright kid tried to turn work in late. Tony looked at him like he was crazy and said, “Man, you know I don’t accept late work. Why are you trying to turn that in?” (Now you must understand that UAH is fifteen miles or so from the State line of Tennessee.) The kid replied, “I know Tony, but you don’t understand. I had to go to Tennessee to get my parents out of jail!”

Tony was blowed. He would always end this little anecdote by saying, “If you can top that excuse, I’ll let you turn it in late.” Suffice it to say that in fifteen years of teaching, that excuse has never been topped.

My best friend’s dad is a dentist. He had a professor for several of his classes. This particular professor thought he had a sense of humor, so at the end of every lecture, his last slide was that of Goya’s The Reclining Nude.

When this slide came up, the professor would emphatically shout GOYA! which was an acronym for Get Off Your Ass!

Lastly, since Disney’s gotten in trouble again and again because the word “sex” usually appears in swirls of dust or stars in their children’s cartoons, Pixar in their newest movie have used computers to randomly generate this effect. Unfortunately on the first run of the new software the phrase Eat my ass, Disney was observed in a generated cloud. Back to the drawing board I suppose.

That’s right. This is ehowton sitting in for the Professor Today. He sends his greetings and his love, but says he’s too busy standing in line at Walmart drooling over this:

I don’t watch much television. I really don’t have the time, and am usually buried with hundreds of other things to accomplish. It’s not that I don’t like watching television; rather I have difficulty finding anything really worth watching. I despise sitcoms, and my intolerance for ‘reality shows’ has been well documented since 1992 (as has my frustration with the cattle who watch them).

This leaves very little prime-time network viewing. Saddled further by the fact that I’m not what one would call an ‘early adopter’ I usually dismiss even great shows initially based on nothing more than the fact that they’re new shows. Narrow minded perhaps, but you people who don’t live in the real world might be surprised at how often that philosophy has saved my ass.

Understanding that pilots are usually painfully dull as the exposition of any new series, I’m not quick to judge those–quite the opposite rather, I behave quite unlike myself in an irrational manner to promote to myself and others the possibilities of a new show. Unfortunately, most of what I’ve seen during first run and even those shows I’ve waited until second season has been quite disappointing to me and short-lived on my Tivo. I simply cannot abide mediocrity.

Except Bones. And this is quite unlike me, but so far, just catching parts of a couple of episodes, I find this show quite endearing. And this surprises me, because one of the things I abhor about a series is the mixed-bag-of-characters-with-a-provided-commonality formula. I think it’s the fact that the ‘differences’ shown here, aren’t large, but minor ideological ones. They’re all still geeks, just geeks in different ways. But that’s still not what endears me to the show. You even have the standard ‘fish out of water’ scenario that audiences love…the FBI agent doesn’t fit in with the geeks and the geeks are socially inept outside of their lab–its what the original CSI seemed to strive for, but these guys actually manage to pull it off. Despite these obvious ploys, I’ve fallen for it. And it’s a good thing I like characters, not actors, because if I based this show solely off of David Boreanaz’s Angel I’d have likely missed a really good thing.

Of course the whole hot-chick-made-to-look-geeky (aka Linda Cardellini cast as Velma in Scooby-Doo) never hurts…and I’m a sucker for the dichotomy of the strength and vulnerability Dr. Brennan displays and a huge fan of the sarcasm-to-lighten-the-horrific Hodgins gives to the ordinary.
But I’m pretty sure the reason I enjoy this show is because it hits close to home. No, I’m not a super-genius introvert with a lack of social skills, but most of my close friends are, and I love them for it. These guys on the show share a rare camaraderie that is reminiscent of the time I’ve spent working in my field of expertise. And because my friends and co-workers are operating on a plane of existence far above my own, I’ve always had to work harder than they do just to keep up. You wouldn’t believe the amount of energy I expend trying to appear as if I’m not working extra hard all the while actually doing it…which is why I think I enjoy this show so much–everyone working together, albeit at a different pace and using their own methodologies, to solve a problem. It’s what I do every day.

Seeking guest posters. Will resume tomorrow.

I am now a professional peanuts peddler for a living…I have people who have subscribed to me for over a year and I know nothing about them. How sad…no one has said anything about the fact that my text is justified (alignment term i.e. rigid margins on both the left and right hand side)…I got a call yesterday from a local TV station for a job interview. There are other candidates, but I feel like I will get the position this time. Even if I don’t, I will endure and try again later…something tells me I will continue to have loads of free time and won’t be as stressed as when I worked for Domohoe’s, even though I probably won’t have that kind of income for a long time…the holidays are right around the corner and I’m finally excited. Compare this to other years…I’m looking forward to finishing this script, even though I’m going to have to kill myself to get through making notes and getting a complete draft by Christmas…still need to work on Timon’s book…anticipating making that noir film at the first of the year. What fun!…I’ve been waking up early here lately and going to bed even earlier. Since being unemployed, there have been several times I will stay awake for thirty-six hours or so and then crash at 1600 the following day, only to wake up at 0530 the next morning…today I woke up at 0400…I should probably take the advice of a friend and go get A+ certified and peddle that business too…I may have a few writing credits to my name if this laid back schedule keeps up…you really need to go check out Eric and I’s AIM conversation from yesterday…

Is it just me, or are humans pathetic? I mean come on!

I live in a studio apartment (when I’m not in my LA chateau) and it has a small water heater. Something like 20 gallons. I’ve been here three years now, and the water is never hot enough. It’s not hot enough when I shave, it’s sure not hot enough when I take a shower and it’s not hot enough when I wash dishes. I don’t understand this.

Maybe the pipes just aren’t insolated. I’ll have hot water for 5 minutes in the dead hot of summer. Other then that, there’s no hot water. I’ve even turned the hot water heater up to 145 degrees, give or take. This is just disturbing.

When I went home last Christmas, they had hot water. Granted, it still didn’t last and there were a few days where it wasn’t quite hot enough. I don’t buy into the theory that I can tolerate water that is that hot, but for God’s sake, can’t I get a break? This is just menacing.

What do you think is going on here?

This one is 15 minutes. Still a bit longer then what I would have liked, but you begged for it, so you got it.

Do you think that Eric (ehowton) influences this site more than any other reader? If so, is it fair?